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DRAMATIC 
PORTRAITS 

BY  P.  P.  HOWE 


NEW    YORK 
MITCHELL    KENNERLEY 

MCMXIII 


A  critic  should  be  taught  to 
criticise  a  work  of  art  with- 
out making  any  reference  to 
the  personality  of  the  author. 
This,  in  fact,  is  the  beginning 
of  criticism. 

Wilde  :  A  Letter  on  "  Dorian  Gray 

Every  man's  work,  whether 
it  be  literature  or  7nusic  or 
pictures  or  architecture  or 
anything  else,  is  always  a 
portrait  of  himself  . 

Butler  :  "  The  Way  of  All  Flesh  " 


1  ^0.  'i 


NOTE 

"^       Throughout  this  book  a  particular  point  of  view  has 

02     been  adhered  to,  a  point  of  view  from  which  the  dramatic 

d:      art  is  looked  upon  as  a  separate  art  from  the  literary, 

^-r      and  from  which    especial    attention   is   given  to  the 

manner  of  its  practice.     Thus,  the   works  of  nearly 

all  the  dramatists  passed  under  review  are  to  be  read 

— a  complete  list  of  the  books  will  be  found  in  the 

f^     Bibliography  at  the  end — but  I  have  spoken  of  them> 

^     as  far  as  possible,  in  terms  of  their  presentation  in  the 

theatre. 
>-         Four  of  the  chapters  first  appeared  in  the  Fortnightly 
^     RevieWy  and   I  wish  to  make  to  the  Editor  of  that 
periodical  full  acknowledgment  of  his  courtesy. 

P.  P.  H. 


vii 


280549 


A  cri*' 
c' 


CONTENTS 

PACK 

I,  Arthur  Pinero  11 

II.   Henry  Arthur  Jones  53 

III.  Oscar  Wilde  83 

IV.  J.  M.  Barrie  115 
V.  Bernard  Shaw  133 

VI.  St.  John  Hankin  163 

VII.  Granville  Barker  185 

VIII.  Hubert  Henry  Davies  209 

IX.  John  Galsworthy  231 

Chronology  of  Plays  257 

Bibliography  263 


IX 


I 


ARTHUR  PINERO 

N  the  third  act    of   the   thirty-third  play  of 
Sir  Arthur  Pinero,  we  read  : 


HiLABY.  Come,  Mrs.  Filmer  !  Let  us  believe,  if  we 
can — if  it  makes  us  better,  and  gentler,  and  more  merciful  I 
— let  us  believe  that  in  all  this  there  was  the  hand  of  God  1 
Nina  [harshly].  Very  well ;  let  us  believe  it.  [Looking 
him  in  the  face  defiantly  and  measuring  her  words.]  Only  we 
must  believe  equally  that  it's  the  hand  of  God  that  has 
brought  these  letters  from  their  hiding-place  and  has 
delivered  them  to  me. 

Since  this  is  to  be  an  inquiry  into  drama,  and 
not  an  inquiry  into  theology  or  philosophy,  we  must 
assume  at  the  outset  that  it  was  not  the  hand  of 
God  that  caused  the  first  Mrs.  Filmer  Jesson  and 
her  lover  to  write  incriminating  letters  to  one 
another  while  they  were  in  the  same  house,  that 
caused  her  to  store  them  behind  the  loose  boarding 
in  a  cupboard  in  her  boudoir,  that  killed  her  in  a 
carriage  accident,  and  that  delivered  the  letters 
tluee  years  later  into  the  possession  of  her  suc- 
cessor ;    but  the  hand  of  Sir  Arthur  Pinero.     The 

11 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

drama  must  have  reality,  but  the  first  essential  to 
our  understanding  of  an  art  is  that  we  should 
not  believe  it  to  be  actual  life.  The  spectator 
who  shouts  his  warning  and  advice  to  the  heroine 
when  the  villain  is  approaching  is,  in  the  theatre, 
the  only  true  believer  in  the  hand  of  God  ;  and  he 
is  liable  to  find  it  in  a  drama  lower  than  the  best. 
Let  us  believe  that  it  is  the  hand  of  Sir  Arthur 
Pinero  we  are  to  talk  about.  And  let  us,  for  the 
moment,  place  on  one  side  the  fourteen  or  fifteen 
farces  and  comic  plays,  from  The  Schoolmistress 
and  The  Magistrate  to  A  Wife  without  a  Smile  and 
Preserving  Mr.  Panmure.  No  one  would  think  of 
looking  for  the  hand  of  God  in  these. 

An  inquiry  into  the  serious  art  of  this  dramatist 
is  an  inquiry  into  upwards  of  thirty  years  of  the 
English  theatre.  The  work  of  Sir  Arthur  Pinero 's 
prentice  hand  is  shrouded  in  an  obscurity  which 
one  must  believe  to  be  deliberate.  The  present 
generation  may  know  only  of  Daisy's  Escape  and 
Bygones  as  dwelling  "  as  happy  blendings  of 
humour  and  pathos  "  in  the  memory  of  Mr. 
William  Archer,  a  critic  of  the  period.  We  must 
rest  content  to  call  them  bygones,  these. 

With  a  third  play,  Hester's  Mystery,  the  hand  of 
Sir  Arthur  Pinero  comes  into  the  light.  It  is  a 
play  in  one  act,  with  a  "  rural  setting "  and 
"rustic  dialogue,"  of  the  stage.  There  is  a  nice 
young  man  causing  great  mystery  at  the  farm  of 
Hester's  mother,  because  he  is  so  obviously 
12 


ARTHUR  PINERO 

superior  to  the  common  labourers.  Hester  comes 
home  from  school,  very  bright  and  cheerful.  A 
sinister  schoolmaster  comes  after  her,  and  threatens, 
if  she  does  not  reward  his  base  love,  to  tell  her 
mother  that  she  has  not  been  to  school  for  seven 
weeks.  This  is  Hester's  mystery.  She  defies  the 
base  schoolmaster,  takes  the  nice  young  man  by 
the  hand,  and  a  baby  is  produced  from  somewhere. 
Hester  and  the  nice  young  man  were  married  a 
year  ago.  Hester's  mother  cries  into  the  cot,  and 
apologizes  to  the  baby  for  the  hard  things  she  has 
said.  Mr.  Archer  thought  the  little  play  "  dealt 
with  a  rather  dangerous  theme,  but  dealt  with  it 
cleverly. ' '  This  was  in  the  year  when  the  European 
theatre  was  giving  its  attention  to  the  theme  of 
*'  Ghosts,"  and  finding  it  enjoyable. 

Sir  Arthur  Pinero's  next  rural  drama  was  The 
Squire,  in  which  certain  people  thought  they 
detected  an  unacknowledged  debt  to  the  hand  of 
Mr.  Thomas  Hardy,  probably  on  insufficient 
evidence.^  About  this  time  Mr.  Archer  gave  it 
as  his  opinion  that  "  a  little  study  of  French 
methods,  without  diminishing  Mr.  Pinero's  origi- 
nality, would  be  almost  certain  to  improve  his 
form." 

Lords  and  Commons  was  a  play  about  a  young 

^  Since  this  play  is  not  included  in  Sir  Arthur  Pinero's 
printed  works,  it  is  not  possible  to  say  whether  it  was  better 
than  the  play  Mr.  Hardy  himself  made  from  the  novel 
"  Far  from  the  Madding  Crowd,"  or  not  so  good. 

13 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

gentleman  who  married  a  girl  of  lower  degree,  and 
had  to  part  from  her  on  the  wedding-day  because 
he  discovered  that  her  mother  and  father  had 
not  been  married.  The  hand  of  a  Scandinavian 
novelist  assisted  the  dramatist  to  this  play.  Mr. 
Archer  confessed  that  he  left  the  theatre  on  the 
first  night  "  with  a  feeling  of  pleasant  exhilaration. 
The  play  seemed  to  me  healthy  and  earnest  in 
tone,  entertaining  in  detail.  The  dialogue  I 
thought  admirable." 

The  Hobby  Horse  was  a  play  about  a  racing  man 
who  left  his  wife  a  good  deal  alone,  so  that  she 
engaged  in  good  works  in  the  East  End  of  London 
under  an  assumed  name,  and  allowed  a  curate  to 
fall  in  love  with  her.  When  the  curate  found  out 
the  truth  he  was  much  shaken.  "  Perhaps  the 
Hobby  Horse,'^  wrote  the  critic  who  introduced 
the  play  in  its  printed  form,  "  in  its  defiance  of  the 
conventional  demand  for  wholesale  conjugal  happi- 
ness in  the  last  act,  though  an  ample  supply  was 
conceded,  was  a  little  before  its  time." 

Sweet  Lavender  was  a  play  about  a  young  man 
in  chambers  in  the  Temple  who  fell  in  love  with  his 
landlady's  daughter.  A  barrister  friend,  who  was 
unfortunate  enough  to  be  frequently  drunk, 
smoothed  over  every  difficulty  for  them  and 
proved  himself  to  be  really  a  most  charming 
fellow.  When  it  happens  to  come  out  that  the 
young  man's  guardian  in  his  youth  himself  fell 
in  love  with  a  landlady's  daughter,  and  that  she 
14 


ARTHUR  PINERO 

is  this  very  identical  landlady,  and  that  her 
daughter  is  his  daughter,  he  is  very  sorry  for  the 
wrong  he  has  done,  and  an  ample  supply  of  conjugal 
happiness  is  conceded.  The  dramatist  of  Sweet 
Lavender  was,  said  Mr.  William  Archer,  "  the  master 
of  our  contemporary  stage,  the  only  writer  (Mr. 
Gilbert,  perhaps,  excepted)  whose  work  showed 
intellectual  grip  and  originality,  combined  with 
thorough  literary  craftsmanship." 

The  Weaker  Sex  was  a  play  about  an  American 
poet,  who  proves  to  be  some  one  else,  whom  a 
mother  falls  in  love  with — one  thinks  for  the  second 
time — and  her  daughter  too.  In  the  end  the  poet 
goes  off  very  nobly  and  leaves  mother  and  daughter 
to  console  one  another. 

We  have  come  to  The  Profligate.  The  Profligate 
was  a  play  about  "  the  union  of  a  delicate-minded 
child  with  a  coarse,  gross-natured  profligate." 
The  profligate,  bearing  *'  the  signs  of  a  dissolute 
life  in  his  face,"  marries  the  young  girl.  To  the 
office  of  the  solicitor  who  is  the  young  girl's  guar- 
dian happens  to  come  another  young  girl  seduced 
by  the  profligate  in  the  country,  directed  here  by 
the  first  young  girl  and  her  brother  who  happened 
to  meet  her  in  the  train.  In  the  second  act  the 
honeymoon  of  the  first  young  girl  and  the  profligate, 
"  who  has  lost  his  dissipated  look,"  is  interrupted 
near  Florence  by  the  arrival  of  the  seduced  young 
girl,  who  has  happened  to  enter  the  service  of  people 
who  happen  to  be  friends  of  the  first  young  girl. 

15 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

In  the  third  act  comes  the  scene  of  confrontation. 
In  the  fourth  act,  a  year  later,  the  seduced  young 
girl  looks  at  the  face  for  the  last  time  of  the  first 
young  girl's  brother  (who  has  come  to  love  her) 
and  vanishes  to  Australia  for  ever,  while  the 
profligate  returns  home  to  the  first  young  girl  and 
(a)  takes  poison,  (b)  lives  happily  ever  after.  The 
first  ending  was  the  one  preferred  by  Sir  Arthur 
Pinero,  but  the  second  ending  was  given  in  the 
theatre  and  approved  by  Mr.  Clement  Scott  and 
Mr.  Archer  as  the  "  only  logical  conclusion." 
The  Profligate  made  a  great  sensation. 

Lady  Bountiful  was  a  play  about  a  young  heiress 
in  the  country  who  loved  a  young  gentleman  who 
came  to  town  and  married  the  daughter  of  a  riding- 
master.  When  business  became  bad  with  the  riding- 
school  he  lived  with  his  wife  and  her  parents  in  the 
basement  of  a  tenement  house.  Shortly  after  the 
young  heiress  has  paid  them  a  visit,  the  young 
wife  dies  in  her  chair  before  our  eyes  while  her 
husband  is  talking  to  the  baby  in  the  cradle  about 
the  future.  In  the  fourth  act  the  young  heiress 
is  about  to  be  married  to  an  old  gentleman,  when 
who  should  stroll  into  the  church  but  the  young 
widower,  in  whose  favour  the  old  gentleman 
magnanimously  retires. 

The  Second  Mrs.  Tanqueray  was  a  play  about  a 
widower  who  knowingly  marries  a  lady  who  has 
been  the  property  of  several  men  before,  and  takes 
her  to  live  in  the  country.  When  his  daughter 
16 


ARTHUR  PINERO 

by  his  first  marriage  falls  in  love  with  a  young  man, 
the  young  man  proves  to  have  been  one  of  her 
stepmother's  protectors.  The  second  Mrs.  Tan- 
queray  remarks  that  the  world  is  very  small,  and 
goes  upstairs  and  commits  suicide.  The  suicide  is 
reported  to  us  by  the  daughter.  "  The  limitations 
of  Mrs.  Tanqueray  are  really  the  limitations  of  the 
dramatic  form,"  wrote  Mr.  William  Archer. 

The  Notorious  Mrs.  Ehhsmith  was  a  play  about  a 
lady  who  held  "  regrettable  opinions  "  on  some 
points,  and  who,  before  she  fell  in  with  a  rising 
young  politician,  had  gone  so  far  in  propagating 
them  as  to  become  alternatively  known  as  Mad 
Agnes.  Since  she  fears  that  she  may  find  herself 
loving  the  young  politician  in  the  "  helpless, 
common  way  of  women,"  they  live  together  without 
the  ceremony  of  marriage,  until  the  young  politi- 
cian's uncle  the  Duke  comes  to  Venice  and  brings 
with  him  the  young  politician's  wife.  Mrs.  Ebb- 
smith,  after  putting  a  Bible  into  the  fire  to  show 
her  contempt  for  conventional  morality,  burns  her 
hand  in  taking  it  out  again,  and  retires  from  the 
contest  to  learn  to  pray  for  the  young  politician 
and  for  the  young  politician's  legal  wife  whom  she 
has  wronged. 

The  Benefit  of  the  Doubt  was  a  play  about  an 
innocent  young  woman  who,  since  the  Divorce 
Court  has  given  her  but  the  "  benefit  of  the  doubt," 
must  positively  "  sit  tight  "  in  town  in  order  to 
win    back   her   good   name ;     but    her   husband 

B  17 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

proposes  to  take  her  abroad.  Whereupon  she  goes 
straight  off  to  the  other  man.  His  jealous  wife, 
whose  petition  it  is  that  has  been  dismissed,  is  put 
into  the  next  room,  while  he  goes  through  the 
ordeal  of  receiving  the  innocent  young  woman  in 
such  a  manner  as  will  establish  their  innocence 
in  his  wife's  hearing.  They  survive  the  ordeal  ; 
the  innocent  young  woman's  family  turns  up, 
including  a  bishop  ;  and  we  are  left  happy  in  the 
knowledge  that  now  the  innocent  young  woman's 
good  name  will  be  all  right. 

The  Princess  and  the  Butterfly  was  a  play  about  a 
princess,  no  longer  quite  young,  and  her  admirer 
the  butterfly,  the  man  of  forty  ;  and  the  play  sets 
out  in  five  acts  of  London  and  Parisian  drawing- 
rooms  how  the  Princess  and  the  butterfly  did 
not  marry  one  another,  but  each  married  with 
youth. 

The  Gay  Lord  Quex  was  a  play  about  another 
profligate,  who  means,  like  the  other  one,  to  turn 
over  a  new  leaf  ;  but  in  the  course  of  doing  so,  he 
is  unwise  enough  to  pay  a  farewell  visit  to  a 
Duchess  in  her  bedroom  at  midnight.  This  gives  a 
young  woman  who  owns  a  manicure  shop  in  Bond 
Street,  but  who  is  spending  the  night  in  the  same 
house,  the  opportunity  of  doing  a  little  detective 
work  in  the  interests  of  the  young  lady  the  gay 
lord  is  to  marry,  who  happens  to  be  her  foster- 
sister.  In  the  course  of  this  detective  work  the 
gay  lord  and  the  manicurist  get  shut  up  in  the 
18 


ARTHUR  PINERO 

bedroom  together ;  and  our  feelings  are  tremen- 
dously worked  upon  by  the  duel  which  ensues. 
Whose  reputation  is  to  go  spotless  out  at  that 
door — the  gay  lord's  or  the  manicurist's  ?  Honours 
are  easy  :  the  gay  lord  is  allowed  to  turn  over  his 
new  leaf,  and  the  manicurist  is  suffered  to  make 
happy  her  fiance  the  palmist  (who  also  happens 
to  be  sleeping  in  the  same  house). 

Iris  was  a  play  about  a  young  woman  who  has 
neither  the  recklessness  nor  the  power  of  self- 
denial  necessary  to  choose  between  the  young  lover 
who  is  poor  and  the  middle-aged  Jewish  lover  who 
is  rich  ;  so  she  keeps  them  both  on.  She  drifts,  and 
she  deteriorates,  until  she  loses  both  men.  We 
leave  her  Jewish  lover  smashing  the  furniture,  as 
her  own  life  is  smashed. 

Letty  was  a  play  about  a  young  woman  of  the 
lower  middle  class  who  might  have  married  her 
employer  or  accepted  the  protection  of  a  well- 
disposed  young  man-about -town  ;  but  in  an  epi- 
logue we  learn  how  much  wiser  she  was  to  become 
the  wife  of  a  photographer. 

The  Thunderbolt,  the  thirty-fourth  play  of  Sir 
Arthur  Pinero,  and  successor  to  His  House  in  Order, 
was  a  play  about  a  will.  The  absence  of  the  will 
makes  the  members  of  a  provincial  family  wealthy  ; 
the  sudden  confession  of  one  of  their  number  that 
she  destroyed  the  will  makes  quite  a  different 
person  wealthy.  The  wife's  guilt  is  taken  on 
himself  by  the  husband,  and  a  most  charitable 

19 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

part  is  played  by  the  young  person  who  is  the 
injured  beneficiary. 

Mid-Channel  was  a  play  about  a  woman  of  the 
newly  wealthy  middle  class  who,  because  life  is 
allowed  to  contain  no  worthy  purpose  for  her,  is 
driven  out  of  life,  while  her  husband  is  driven  into 
drink.  The  careless  lover  and  the  careless  husband, 
having  finished  their  talk  about  her  in  the  next 
room,  open  the  door  and  find  she  has  thrown  herself 
over  the  balcony. 

The  "  Mind  the  Paint "  Girl  was  a  play  about  a 
young  lady  of  the  musical  drama  and  her  circle. 
She  was  not  only  beautiful  but  good,  and  when  she 
felt  badly  about  leaving  her  humbler  admirer  for 
the  son  of  an  earl,  she  was  exhorted  to  remember 
'  wot  a  lot  o'  good  '  she  was  doing  to  the  aristocracy. 

That  is  the  serious  drama  of  Sir  Arthur  Pinero. 
Since  it  is  what  we  have  to  talk  about,  and  its 
bulk  is  large,  we  shall  be  none  the  worse  for  having 
it  before  us.  Supposing  it  to  have  limitations,  for 
the  moment,  are  the  limitations  of  this  drama 
"  the  limitations  of  the  dramatic  form  "  ?  If 
the  critic  was  right  about  The  Second  Mrs.  Tan- 
queray  this  book  may  end  where  it  begins,  with  the 
drama  of  Sir  Arthur  Pinero. 

There  is  the  drama  which  is  an  art,  and  there  is 
the  drama  also  which  is  a  trade.  The  distinction 
is  an  important  one,  but  not  one  that  is  always 
clearly  made ;  that  is  the  reason  why  we  shall  do 
well  to  make  it  here,  before  we  go  further.  If  a 
20 


ARTHUR  PINERO 

man  is  moved  to  put  his  vision  of  life,  or  of  some- 
thing in  life,  into  a  play,  he  will  want  a  theatre  for 
it,  because  except  in  the  theatre  he  cannot  look 
upon  his  play,  and  see  whether  it  is  good  ;  and 
when  a  play,  conceived  after  this  fashion,  comes  to 
the  theatre,  it  is  likely,  given  the  necessary  qualities 
in  the  dramatist,  to  be  art.  But  the  theatre  is 
always  with  us  ;  in  a  city  where  a  great  many  people 
live,  there  are  a  great  many  theatres.  These  theatres 
must  be  kept  open.  For  economic  reasons,  which 
need  not  be  gone  into  here,  they  must  be  kept 
open.  For  social  reasons,  too,  they  must  be  kept 
open  ;  for  a  man  must  have  somewhere  to  go  when 
he  is  tired  with  his  day's  work,  and  without  the 
theatres  what  would  there  be  to  do  between  dinner 
and  supper  ?  The  social  reason  for  the  theatres  is 
that  they  pass  the  time  ;  and  why  should  they  not  ? 
It  is  an  excellent  function.  But  a  minority  of 
people  are  not  content  to  pass  the  time  unless  they 
pass  it  in  some  highly  approved  fashion.  Nothing 
is  more  highly  approved,  as  a  pastime,  than  Art. 
Now  there  is  one  art  that  is  thoroughly  efficient 
as  a  pastime,  and  at  the  same  time  so  amusing  that 
you  would  never  know  it  was  an  art  at  all.  This  is 
the  theatre.  And  the  theatre,  if  it  is  not  content  to 
be  frankly  a  place  where  time  is  passed,  must  have 
a  drama  in  order  to  keep  open. 

Besides,  every  really  cultured  country  has  a 
Drama.  What  would  there  be  for  the  critics  to  do 
if  they  could  not  ask  themselves  from  time  to  time, 

21 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

Is  the  Drama  Advancing  ?  That  is  the  reason  why 
the  theatres  of  commerce  are  not  all  jolly  places  like 
the  Tivoli  and  the  Gaiety.  Art,  where  the  people 
have  "got  culture,"  is  good  business.  So  it 
happens  that  every  great  country  has  a  number  of 
theatres  devoted  to  the  Drama.  The  plays  that 
come  to  the  theatre  in  order  to  keep  it  open  may 
perfectly  well  be  art ;  but  it  is  more  likely  that  they 
will  not  be.  It  will  now  be  clear  that  a  "  drama- 
tist "  is  not  so  absolute  a  thing  as  we  perhaps 
thought  him.  People,  between  dinner  and  supper, 
like  to  have  a  little  acting.  They  like  their  pleasures 
to  take  an  approved  form,  and  so  a  play  is  provided  ; 
this  has  the  advantage  also  of  giving  them  a  story  to 
talk  about  afterwards,  when  they  have  done  with  the 
merits  and  the  demerits  of  the  actors.  The  actors 
like  to  have  a  play  provided  also,  since  they  have 
ceased  to  be  vagabonds  and  have  become  aware 
of  the  exceptional  dignity  of  their  profession.  The 
dramatist  is  merely  the  man  with  the  trick  of 
providing  these  plays.  It  will  be  a  mistake  to 
think  of  the  dramatist  as  the  artist  whose  vision 
of  life  is  so  clear  and  compelling  as  to  take  inevit- 
ably the  form  we  characterize  as  dramatic.  So  long 
as  there  are  theatres  there  must  be  "  dramatists," 
vision  or  no  vision.  The  men  who  prove  their 
ability  in  any  generation  to  keep  the  theatres  open 
will  be  the  great  dramatists  of  that  generation. 

But  when  they  have  proved  their  ability  to 
weave  a  story  round  the  favourite  actors,  they  will, 
22 


ARTHUR  PINERO 

artists  or  not  artists,  evolve  a  kind  of  pride.  They 
will  like  to  do  their  work  well ;  they  will  evolve 
the  tradition  of  the  "  well-made  "  play.  The  well- 
made  play  is  orderly,  efficient,  and  economical  ;  it 
is  thoroughly  fitted  to  keep  the  theatres  open. 
The  actors  will  be  content  with  the  well-made 
play,  because  it  will  carry  them  along,  and  because 
its  *'  great  scene  "  will  invest  them  with  greatness. 
The  public  will  be  content,  because  they  like  to 
see  their  favourite  actors  involved  in  important 
situations.  The  critics  will  be  content,  because 
they  can  compare  one  well-made  play  with  another 
play  not  so  well  made,  one  actor  with  another 
actor  ;  and  have  they  not  always  their  "  instinctive, 
unreasoning,  unreasonable  love  for  the  theatre, 
simply  as  the  theatre,"  to  fall  back  upon  ?  It  will 
be  a  pleasure  to  the  dramatist  to  go  on  conquering 
unnecessary  conventions,  and  so  to  give  further 
contentment  to  the  critics  by  proof  that  the  drama 
is  advancing.  The  theatre  of  commerce,  happy  in 
the  well-made  play,  appears  such  a  contented 
little  institution  that  it  is  almost  an  inconsiderate 
act  for  the  artist  to  break  into  it.  Without  him 
those  concerned  can  so  well  keep  their  house  in 
order. 

The  artist,  moreover,  will  not  find  it  easy  to 
break  in.  The  dramatists  who  have  proved  their 
ability  to  keep  the  theatres  open  do  not  want  him. 
The  managers  do  not  want  him  so  long  as  they  are 
able  to  keep  their  theatres  open.     So  long  as  they 

23 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

are  willing  to  keep  the  managers'  theatres  open  the 
public  give  proof  that  they  do  not  want  him.     An 
official  of  the  Royal  Household,   by  whose  per- 
mission the  theatres  are  opened  at  all  in  England, 
most  certainly  does  not  want  him.     But  of  all 
these,  the  most  successful  in  keeping  him  out  are 
the  practising  dramatists.     As  we  have  seen,  they 
are  very  proud  of  their  profession.     Having  proved 
their  own  ability  to  keep  the  theatres  open,  they 
take  their  stand  upon  the  statement  that  it  is  very 
difficult  to  be  a  dramatist.     Drama,  they  say,  is 
not  merely  the  greatest,  it  is  the  most  difficult  of 
the  arts.     They  point  to  the  failure  of  the  poet 
or  novelist  when  he  comes  to  the  theatre,  and  their 
gesture  implies  that  these  lesser,  or  at  least  different, 
artists  are  very  well  in  their  place.     But  they  lack 
the  dramatic  talent.     "  There  is  only  one  exception 
to  the  rule,"  Sir  Arthur  Pinero  has  said,   "that 
during  the  nineteenth  century  no  poet  or  novelist 
of  the  slightest  eminence  made  any  success  upon 
the  stage,  and  even  that  solitary  exception  is  a 
dubious   one.     I  refer,    as   you   may   surmise,   to 
Bulwer   Lytton.     There    is    no    doubt    as   to    his 
success  ;    but   what   does  the  twentieth   century 
think   of   his   eminence  ?  "     Let   us   see   how   Sir 
Arthur    Pinero    goes   on   to    define   the    dramatic 
talent,  by  which  alone  the  theatre  of  commerce  may 
be  satisfactorily  kept  open. 

"  What  is  dramatic  talent  ?  "  he  has  asked.^    "  Is 

^  Lecture  on  "  R.  L.  Stevenson  :  the  Dramatist." 
24 


ARTHUR  PINERO 

it  not  the  power  to  project  characters,  and  to  cause 
them  to  tell  an  hiteresting  story  through  the  medium 
of  dialogue  ?  This  is  dramatic  talent ;  and 
dramatic  talent,  if  I  may  so  express  it,  is  the  raw 
material  of  theatrical  talent.  Dramatic,  like  poetic, 
talent  is  born,  not  made  ;  if  it  is  to  achieve  success 
on  the  stage,  it  must  be  developed  into  theatrical 
talent  by  hard  study,  and  generally  by  long 
practice.  For  theatrical  talent  consists  in  the  power 
of  making  your  characters  not  only  tell  a  story  by 
means  of  dialogue,  but  tell  it  in  such  skilfully 
devised  form  and  order  as  shall,  within  the  limits  of 
an  ordinary  theatrical  representation,  give  rise 
to  the  greatest  possible  amount  of  that  peculiar 
kind  of  emotional  effect  the  production  of  which 
is  the  one  great  function  of  the  theatre." 

The  production  of  this  peculiar  kind  of  emotional 
effect  is  the  business,  then,  of  the  well-made  play. 
It  requires  a  great  deal  of  theatrical  talent,  make 
no  mistake  about  that.  The  well-made  play  is 
not  merely  some  kind  of  a  story  woven  about 
favourite  actors ;  it  is  a  story  woven  so  skilfully  that 
it  fits  them  as  beautifully  as  do  their  own  clothes. 
It  is  a  story  carefully  devised  to  contain  every 
situation  which  the  public  is  known  to  love  to  see 
its  actors  in,  told,  for  preference,  in  the  language 
of  the  newspapers  they  have  just  been  reading. 
It  is  a  kind  of  calculation  of  the  chances  of  wringing 
from  the  public  theatrical  emotion.  Above  all,  for 
the  production  of  its  peculiar  kind  of  emotional 

25 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

effect,  it  depends  upon  the  "  great  scene,"  to  which 
all  else  in  the  play  may  be  regarded  as  leading  up. 

It  is  to  be  observed  that  each  of  the  serious 
plays  of  Sir  Arthur  Pinero  may  be  spoken  of  by 
reference  to  a  single  scene,  without  risk  of  misunder- 
standing. Thus  we  have  the  Bible-burning  play, 
the  play  with  the  listening  scene,  the  furniture- 
smashing  play,  the  play  about  a  bedroom,  and  so 
on  ;  and  when  we  name  the  plays  by  this  method, 
we  are  not  conscious  of  having  left  the  essential 
thing  out,  as  we  should  be,  for  example,  if  we  spoke 
of  "  Hamlet  "  as  the  play  with  the  listening  scene, 
or  of  "  Othello  "  as  the  play  about  a  bedroom.  The 
Gay  Lord  Quex  is,  quite  simply,  a  play  about  a  bed- 
room. It  takes  us  two  acts  to  get  into  the  bedroom, 
and  it  takes  us  another  act  to  get  out  again  ;  but 
what  possible  doubt  is  there  that  the  bedroom,  and 
not  the  play,  is  the  thing  ?  Let  us  suppose  the  play 
to  have  been  conceived  somewhat  after  this  fashion. 
First,  take  a  bedroom  ;  put  into  it  a  midnight 
assignation  ;  throw  in  a  third  person  ;  and  stir 
thoroughly.  Now  it  will  not  do  to  be  misled 
by  the  cookery-book  manner  into  thinking  that  we 
may  take  "  any  bedroom  "  :  we  are  making  a  play, 
and  not  a  pudding,  and  theatrical  talent  is  only 
to  be  achieved  by  hard  study,  and  generally  by 
long  practice.  This  bedroom  must  have  at  least 
two  doors,  and  a  boudoir  will  be  desirable  ;  it  is 
by  these  things  that  we  know  the  dramatic  crafts- 
man. Given  the  bedroom,  whom  are  we  to  put  into 
26 


ARTHUR  PINERO 

it  ?     Obviously   a   profligate   to   whom   detection 
is  dangerous,  a  guilty  woman  to  whom  detection  is 
dangerous,    and   an    innocent   woman   to    whom 
detection   is   dangerous.     Why  should  detection 
be  dangerous  to  a  professional  profligate  ?   Let  us 
make  him  an  elderly  profligate  who  is  turning  over 
a  new  leaf,  and,  before  becoming  the  husband  of  a 
charming  young  girl,  is  saying  good-bye  to  the 
Duchess — yes,  a  Duchess,  because  obviously  the 
virtue  of  a  Duchess  is   the  highest   possible  in 
the  scale  of  importance.     Since  the  third  person  is 
to  be  guilty  of  spying,  plainly  she  must  be  of  the 
lower  order  ;  but  if  she  is  of  the  lower  order,  what 
reason  can  there  be  for  setting  so  much  value 
on  her  virtue  ?     She  must  be  sympathetic  ;    she 
must  be  taking  this  risk  in  order  to  shield  some  one 
very  dear  to  her  from  marriage  with  an  elderly 
profligate  ;    we  will  make  her  the  young  lady's 
foster-sister,  and  we  will  add  to  the  sense  of  the 
risk  she  is  taking  by  arranging  that  her  own  fiance 
shall  be  sleeping  in  the  same  house.     Now,  at  last, 
the  scene  should  be  secure  of  its  emotional  effect. 
Move  one,  discovery  of  the  young  person  watching 
at  first  door.     Move  two,  exit  of  the  Duchess  by 
second  door,  and  summons  for  the  young  person. 
Move  three,  the  profligate,  alone  with  the  young 
person  in  the  bedroom,  offers  her  two,  four,  five 
thousand  pounds  as  the  price  of  her  silence.     Move 
four,  the  profligate  appeals  to  the  young  person's 
pity.     Move  five,  the  profligate  turns  the  tables 

27 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

on  the  young  person  :  he  has  the  key,  and  if  they 
are  found  together,  what  is  discovery  for  him,  a 
profligate,  compared  with  discovery  for  her,  an 
innocent  young  person  with  a  fiance  at  the  other 
end  of  the  corridor  ?  Move  six,  desperation  of  the 
young  person,  and  imminent  triumph  of  the  pro- 
fligate. Move  seven,  heroic  resolve  of  the  young 
person  to  sacrifice  her  honour  rather  than  the 
happiness  of  her  foster-sister  ;  she  tugs  at  the 
bell-rope.  Move  eight,  gentlemanly  resolve  of 
the  profligate — who  is  really  quite  a  good  fellow  at 
heart — not  to  bring  ruin  upon  the  young  person. 
Move  nine,  the  household  knocking  at  the  door — 
shall  she  tell  ?  Move  ten,  let  generosity  meet 
generosity  ;  the  household  be  sent  back  to  its  bed  ; 
the  young  person,  turning  to  the  profligate,  say, 
"  Oh,  God  bless  you  !  You — you — you're  a  gentle- 
man !     I'll  do  what  I  can  for  you  !  "  and  Curtain. 

Now  our  business  here  may  fairly  be  with  the 
hand  of  Sir  Arthur  Pinero,  but  it  can  hardly  be 
with  the  mind  of  Sir  Arthur  Pinero  ;  and  we  can 
do  no  more  than  venture  the  suggestion  that  it 
was  somewhat  after  this  fashion  that  The  Gay 
Lord  Quex  came  into  being.  The  Gay  Lord  Quex 
was  a  play  carefully  planned  by  an  expert  crafts- 
man in  such  a  manner  as,  within  the  limits  of  an 
ordinary  theatrical  representation,  to  give  rise  to  the 
greatest  possible  amount  of  that  peculiar  kind  of 
emotional  effect,  the  production  of  which  is,  we 
are  told,  the  one  great  function  of  the  theatre.  The 
28 


ARTHUR  PINERO 

scene  in  the  bedroom  went  off  successfully,  and  we 
called  it  a  good  play.  Now  let  us  turn  to  another 
play  which  was,  in  its  own  day,  equally  successful  ; 
the  play  which  was  laid  out  with  earnestness, 
and  with  the  assistance  of  poetry  upon  the  pro- 
gramme, around  the  thesis  that  no  profligate 
can  ever  be  reformed.  I  suppose  the  great  scene 
of  The  Profligate  was  the  scene  of  confrontation 
in  the  third  act.  By  a  device  of  the  dramatist, 
the  young  wife  is  made  to  believe  that  a  profligate 
peer,  and  not  her  husband,  is  The  Profligate.  "  This 
poor  child  is  a  living  sacrifice  to  a  man  whose 
history  is  a  horrible  chapter  of  dishonour,"  she 
says,  and  the  next  moment,  in  her  presence,  the 
living  sacrifice  is  brought  face  to  face  with  the  man 
whose  history  is  a  horrible  chapter — her  own 
husband  of  a  month  !  "  Girl,  do  you  mean  that 
you  know  Mr.  Renshaw  ?  "  This  is  the  scene  for 
which  we  have  sat  and  waited  ;  now  that  it  is 
over,  do  we  care  very  much  whether  the  fourth 
act  shows  us  a  profligate  poisoned  in  his  wife's 
forgiving  arms,  or  a  profligate — despite  the  poetry 
on  the  programme — happy  for  ever  after  ?  It  is 
for  the  critics  of  the  period  to  answer  ;  but  one 
fancies  not.  We  shall  have  had  our  money's 
worth  in  theatrical  emotion  whichever  way  the 
story  ends. 

We  should  most  of  us  say  that  The  Gay  Lord  Quex 
is  a  better  play  than  The  Profligate ;  but  it  will 
not  do  to  say  that,  and  have  done.     If  the  later 

29 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

play  about  a  profligate  gives  evidence  of  a  more 
highly  developed  theatrical  talent  than  did  the 
earlier  play  about  a  profligate,  the  difference  has 
already  led  us  into  a  discussion  of  technique. 
There  are,  Sir  Arthur  Pinero  has  said,  in  speaking 
of  some  of  his  predecessors  in  the  theatre,^  "  two 
parts  of  technique,  which  I  may  perhaps  call  its 
strategy  and  its  tactics.  In  strategy — in  the 
general  laying  out  of  a  play,  those  transpontine 
dramatists  were  often,  as  I  have  said,  more  than 
tolerably  skilful ;  but  in  tactics,  in  the  art  of 
getting  their  characters  on  and  off  the  stage,  of 
conveying  information  to  the  audience,  and  so 
forth,  they  were  almost  incredibly  careless  and 
conventional."  It  has  been  the  achievement, 
then,  of  Sir  Arthur  Pinero  to  have  improved  the 
strategy  and  tactics  of  English  play-writing,  and 
especially  the  tactics.  Upon  the  production  of 
"  The  Lights  o'  London  "  Mr.  William  Archer,  "  in 
common  with  many  other  critics,  conceived  great 
hopes  of  Mr.  Sims."  But  it  was  not  Mr.  Sims's 
destiny  to  carry  on  the  strategy  and  the  tactics 
of  the  English  well-made  play  to  a  still  higher 
point  of  development.  It  was  Sir  Arthur  Pinero 's, 
and  not  Mr.  Sims's,  to  satisfy  Mr.  Archer's  hopes 
with  a  Mrs.  Tanqueray,  and,  eventually,  more  than 
to  satisfy  them  with  a  His  House  in  Order. 

The  dramatist  of  the  well-made  play  starts,  we 
have  seen,  with  a  situation  which  will  be  "  effective  " 

*  In  "  R.  L.  Stevenson  :  the  Dramatist." 
30 


ARTHUR  PINERO 

in  the  theatre — the  bedroom,  the  Bible-burning,  the 
furniture- smashing.  The  ability  to  conceive  these 
ideas  from  which  theatrical  emotion  may  be  wrung 
is  a  definite  indication  of  theatrical  talent.  Having 
conceived  one  of  these  ideas,  the  dramatist  proceeds 
to  "  lay  it  out " — to  tell  an  interesting  story 
through  the  medium  of  dialogue.  Since  Sir  Arthur 
Pinero's  metaphor  is  military,  we  may  say  that 
The  Gay  Lord  Quex  is  an. interesting  story  laid  out 
like  a  train  of  gunpowder  to  explode  in  a  bedroom. 
Similarly  The  Benefit  of  the  Doubt  is  a  play  written 
because  it  makes  possible  the  scene  in  the  third 
act,  at  which  we  may  look  on  in  an  agony  of 
apprehension  lest  the  innocent  young  woman 
betray  herself  by  a  false  step  into  the  hands  of  the 
listening  wife — we  should  hardly  suspect  the  play 
of  having  been  written  for  the  sake  of  anything 
else  that  is  in  it.  There  are  earlier  crises  in  Mrs. 
Ebbsmith  ;  that  one,  for  example,  at  the  end  of  the 
second  act,  when  the  lady,  by  entering  handsomely 
gowned  and  with  the  fashion  of  her  hair  altered, 
makes  it  clear  to  the  Duke  and  to  us  that  she  is 
going  to  put  up  a  fight ;  but  it  is  by  the  third  act 
and  the  Bible-burning  that  the  play  in  the  theatre 
must  stand  or  fall.  Mrs.  Tanqueray  is  deceptive  ; 
the  play  might  so  easily  have  been  a  tragedy  of 
incompatible  characters.  The  mad  marriage  might 
have  been  made  to  work  its  own  ruin  ;  it  is  sufficient 
to  point  out  that  it  did  not,  but  is  dependent  upon 
the  *'  great  scene  "  of  the  wife  confronted  by  her 

31 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

earlier  protector  in  the  person  of  the  suitor  for  her 
stepdaughter's  hand  for  its  principal  demand  on 
our  emotions.  His  House  in  Order,  in  the  manner 
of  its  laying  out,  is  a  type  perfect  of  the  well-made 
play.  The  letters  are  written,  the  letters  are  con- 
cealed, their  recipient  is  removed  from  this  world  ; 
all  this  is  cast  back  into  the  past.  In  the  play,  the 
letters  are  brought  from  their  hiding-place  and  are 
delivered  into  the  hands  of  the  new  wife  under 
circumstances  which  give  rise  to  the  greatest 
possible  amount  of  that  peculiar  kind  of  emotional 
effect  the  production  of  which  is  the  play's  one  great 
function.  Only  we  need  no  longer  believe  it  was 
the  hand  of  God  that  delivered  them,  any  more 
than  we  really  believe  that  the  hand  that  sent  Mrs. 
Tanqueray  upstairs  to  her  room  to  destroy  herself 
was  the  hand  that  made  the  world  so  inconveniently 
small. 

The  dramatist's  "  strategy  "  lays  out  a  play  so 
effectively  as  sometimes  to  leave  it  quite  dead,  and 
the  dramatist's  "  tactics  "  are  often  such,  it  must 
be  admitted,  as  to  do  nothing  to  bring  it  to  life 
again. 

Now  tactics,  we  saw,  had  three  main  parts  : 
(a)  the  art  of  getting  characters  on  to  the  stage, 
(6)  of  conveying  information  when  they  are  there, 
and  (c)  of  getting  them  oil'  again.  In  The  Profligate, 
the  first  of  Sir  Arthur  Pinero's  plays  to  be  regarded 
as  a  masterpiece,  it  is  desirable  that  the  seduced 
young  person  should  be  got  on  to  the  stage.  She 
32 


ARTHUR  PINERO 

is  brought  along,  quite  simply,  by  the  young  girl 
who  is  about  to  be  married  to  her  seducer,  they 
having  happened  to  become  acquainted  with  one 
another  in  the  railway  train.  Once  on  the  stage, 
it  is  desirable  that  she  should  convey  to  the 
audience  the  information  that  Mr.  Dunstan  Ren- 
shaw  is  her  seducer.  A  sympathetic  young  solicitor, 
partner  to  the  elderly  solicitor  who  is  giving  his 
ward  to  the  profligate,  and  sympathetically  in  love 
with  her  himself,  will  be  useful.  Then  this  is  how 
it  is  done  : 

Hugh  Murray  [to  himself].  Great  Heavens !  If  by  any 
awful  freak  of  fate  this  poor  creature  is  a  victim  of  Renshaw's 

— and  she  at  this  moment  standing  beside  him !     What 

a  fool  I  am  to  think  of  no  man  but  Renshaw  ! 

Janet  Preece.  Don't  ask  me  to  describe  him  in  words, 
sir, — I  can't,  I  can't.  But  I've  taught  myself  to  draw  his 
face  faithfully.  I'm  not  boasting — I  can't  draw  anything 
else  because  I  see  nothing  else.  Give  me  some  paper  I  can 
sketch  upon,  and  a  pencil. 

[Hugh  hands  her  paper  and  pencil,  and  watches 
while  she  sketches.] 

Hugh  Murray  [to  himself].  If  the  face  she  sketches 
should  bear  any  resemblance  to  his,  what  could  I  do,  what 
could  I  do  ? 

Janet  Preece  [to  herself].  That's  with  his  mocking  look 
as  I  last  saw  him.     He  is  always  mocking  me  now. 

Hugh  Murray  [to  himself].  I  could  do  nothing — it's  too 
late — nothing.  Shall  I  look  now  ?  No.  What  a  coward 
I  am  !  Yes.  [He  looks  over  Janet's  shoulder.]  Renshaw  ! 
[He  struggles  against  his  agitation.]  The  wife  !  I  must 
think  of  the  wife.  .  .  . 

Impossible  to  deny  that  this  gives  us  the  inf  orma- 

c  33 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

tion.  We  may  have  doubts  about  this  seduced 
young  person  who,  unable  to  draw  anything  else, 
can  sit  down  and  draw  her  seducer,  "  with  his 
mocking  look,"  so  well  as  to  obtain  instant  recog- 
nition. If  we  put  ourselves  into  her  place,  and 
into  her  period,  we  may  think  it  more  probable 
that  we  should  have  produced  something  with 
an  equal  likeness  to  Mr.  Chamberlain  and  Mr. 
Gladstone.  But  that  we  should  put  ourselves  in 
the  place  of  people  on  the  stage  would  not  have 
seemed  a  fair  test  to  the  English  dramatists  of 
The  Profligate's  year  ;  and  it  was  a  test  that  did 
not  occur  to  the  critics  whose  business  it  was  to 
conceive  great  hopes,  and  to  answer,  at  all  costs 
in  the  affirmative,  the  solemn  question,  Is  Our 
Drama  Advancing  ?  The  scene  in  question  gave 
them  the  information  ;  and,  when  they  had  done 
admiring  the  way  in  which  the  dramatist  got  his 
seduced  young  person  on  to  the  stage,  they  could 
go  on  to  admire  the  way  in  which  he  got  her  off 
again,  by  dismissing  her  sympathetically  to 
Australia.  And  this  is  the  ending  to  the  play 
about  the  wife  who  dies  in  her  chair,  leaving  her 
husband  free  to  go  back  to  the  woman  who  always 
loved  him.  The  latter  is  taking  a  look  at  the  village 
church,  preparatory  to  wedding  another  (Richard) : 

Camilla.  How  could  I  have  forgotten  it  ?  To  have 
hoarded  it  for  five  years  and  then,  in  one  minute  of  forget- 
fulness,  to  let  it  go  from  me  !  [She  sits  by  the  font.]  It  was 
a  trust.  "  If  he  wanders  back  to  England  some  day  without 
34 


ARTHUR  PINERO 

me,"  poor  Margaret  said,  "  give  it  to  him,  with  your  own 
hands."  And  now,  if  ever  he  returns — if — ever —  Oh,  I 
mustn't  think  about  that  1  No  I  God  bless  me  and 
Richard  1     God  bless  me  and  Richard  ! 

[Dennis  ascends  the  steps.   He  passes  Camilla, 
not  seeing  her,  and  walks  across  towards  tlie 
porch.    She  rises  with  a  faint  cry  of  fright,  at 
which  he  turns  sharply  and  faces  her.    They 
stand  staring  at  each  other  silently.] 
Camilla  [in  a  frightened  whisper].    Dennis  ! 
Dennis.    Ah!     [Going  to  her  tvith  outstretched  hands.] 
Camilla  ! 

To  end  is  a  simple  business,  with  Richard  proving 
suitably  magnanimous.  At  times  we  are  tempted 
to  forget  what  the  dramatists  of  the  well-made  play 
so  persistently  have  told  us,  that  theirs  is  the  most 
diflficult  of  the  arts. 

And  now  it  is  time  to  state  quite  clearly  a  fact 
which  must  have  been  sufficiently  obvious  already. 
The  hand  of  Sir  Arthur  Pinero  has  gone  on  gaining 
in  cunning.  It  is  only  because  Sir  Arthur  Pinero 
is  a  clever  man  who  has  advanced  with  his  times 
that  we  were  able  to  say  that  the  history  of  his 
plays  is  the  history  of  thirty  years  of  the  English 
theatre.  Considered  both  strategically  and  tacti- 
cally, we  have  seen  that  The  Gay  Lord  Quex  is  a 
better  made  play  than  The  Profligate — the  ten 
years  that  separated  them  were  ten  years  well 
spent.  The  Princess  and  the  Butterfly  does  not 
come  so  simply  by  its  expected  end  as  Lady  Boun- 
tiful did.  While  Mrs.  Tanqueray  and  Iris  and  Mid- 
Channel  are  all  in  theme  not  dissimilar,  Iris  is  a 

35 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

better  made  play  than  Mrs.  Tanqueray  and  Mid- 
Channel  is  a  better  made  play  than  Iris.  To  the 
last  Sir  Arthur  Pinero  is  willing  to  learn,  is  ready  to 
conquer  an  unnecessary  convention  ;  it  is  the  most 
sterling  of  his  sterling  qualities  In  Mrs.  Tanqueray 
the  comic  relief  afforded  by  Sir  George  and  Lady 
Orreyd  is  an  unnecessary  convention,  which  is 
conquered  in  Iris ;  in  Iris  the  lowering  of  the 
curtain  upon  nine  occasions  is  an  interference  with 
the  direct  telling  of  an  interesting  story,  which  is 
overcome  in  Mid-Channel.  The  "  great  scene  "  of 
the  discovery  of  the  will  in  The  Thunderbolt  is  an 
even  more  skilful  piece  of  work  than  the  "  great 
scene  "  of  the  discovery  of  the  letters  in  His  House 
in  Order.  And  with  certainty  we  may  say  that 
in  the  first  fifteen  years  of  this  dramatist's  pro- 
fessional practice  there  is  nothing  to  foreshadow 
the  mastery  of  stage  means  that  is  shown  in  the 
single  incident  of  the  latchkey  of  Maldonado.  The 
latchkey,  symbol  of  Iris's  freedom  from  molesta- 
tion, is  dropped  into  the  vase  on  the  mantelpiece 
"  with  a  sharp  sound  "  ;  the  sound  is  the  guarantee 
that  we  shall  remember  it  lying  there ;  when 
Maldonado  quietly  withdraws  it,  the  action  speaks 
to  us  of  all  that  he  knows,  of  the  certainty  that 
Iris  will  later  that  evening  meet  with  her  fate. 
This  is  the  famous  "  sense  of  the  theatre  "  ;  it  is 
something  that  is  altogether  apart  from  the  ability 
to  express  oneself  freely  in  the  English  language, 
and  it  is  something  the  possession  of  which  is  by 
36 


ARTHUR  PINERO 

no  means  to  be  under- estimated.  But  just  as  it 
has  been  possible  to  say  something  which  has  a 
general  truth  about  the  strategy  of  the  plays,  so  is 
it  possible  to  say  something  which  has  a  general 
truth  about  their  tactics.  It  is  possible  to  point, 
for  example,  to  the  "  soliloquy  "  and  the  "  aside." 
Essentially,  in  its  use  of  such  things,  the  technique 
of  Pinero  is  the  technique  of  Robertson  and  the 
technique  of  the  Restoration  ;  and  they  are,  it 
may  be  noted,  as  integral  a  part  of  Letty  or  The 
"  Mind  the  Paint "  Girl  as  they  were  of  Dandy 
Dick  or  Sweet  Lavender.  The  people  of  Sir  Arthur 
Pinero  have  a  little  scale  of  factitious  inaudibility 
up  and  down  which  they  run  :  Thinking,  To  him- 
self. Half  to  himself,  To  herself  in  a  whisper,  To 
herself  in  a  low  voice.  In  an  undertone.  Under  her 
breath  as  he  passes  her.  In  her  ear,  and  so  on.  These 
little  licences  are,  as  may  be  imagined,  a  great 
convenience  to  the  working  dramatist.  And  need 
it  be  said  that  when  a  person  in  a  play  by  Sir  Arthur 
Pinero  is  in  receipt  of  a  letter,  the  spirit  of  humours 
answers  the  prayer  of  Maria  in  the  comedy  and 
intimates  reading  aloud  to  him  ? 

It  is  possible  to  say,  for  another  example,  and 
I  do  not  think  that  we  shall  be  contradicted, 
that  there  is  sometimes  a  lack  of  intimacy  between 
the  people  "  brought  on  "  and  "  taken  off  "  in 
fulfilment  of  this  dramatist's  purposes,  and  in 
the  manner  in  which  they  "  convey  their  informa- 
tion."    Sir   Arthur   Pinero's   dramatic   diction   is 

37 


280319 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

something  quite  constant.  We  are  surprised,  in 
view  of  the  intimate  relationship  existing  between 
them  and  the  fact  that  he  arrives  through  the 
window,  that  Sophy's  fianc6  should  say,  "  I  love 
you  !  Ever  since  I  had  the  honour  of  being  pre- 
sented to  you  by  Mr.  Salmon,  the  picture- dealer 
next  door,  I  have  thought  of  you,  dreamt  of  you, 
constantly."  Since  Mr.  Salmon  played  so  important 
a  part,  it  cannot  be  that  Sophy  should  have  for- 
gotten that  he  is  a  picture- dealer  and  lives  next 
door ;  is  it  possible  that  it  is  to  us,  and  not  to 
Sophy,  that  the  information  is  being  conveyed  ? 
Is  it  possible,  in  the  following,  that  Iris  is  telling 
us  and  not  her  young  lover  that  his  uncle  is  an 
Archdeacon  named  Standish  ? 

Laurence.  You  remember  that  when,  six  weeks  ago,  I 
wrote  to  my  uncle,  telling  him  I  was  hanging  up  for  a 
while  the  idea  of  leaving  England,  he  sent  me,  generously 
enough,  his  good  wishes  and  a  cheque  for  five  hundred 
pounds  ? 

Iris.  Yes. 

Laurence.  At  the  same  time  his  letter  conveyed  a  very 
decided  intimation  that  I  was  neither  to  see  him  nor  hear 
from  him  again. 

Iris.  I  read  Archdeacon  Standish's  note. 

But  it  is  not  only  when  burdened  by  a  consciousness 
of  the  information  they  have  to  convey  that  this 
dramatist's  people  find  intimacy  impossible.  Two 
girls  of  twenty  are  having  a  cosy  chat  together  ; 
says  one  of  them  :  "  Leslie,  I  perceive  I  have  done 
Mr.  Renshaw  an  injustice.  But  surely  you  had  some 
38 


ARTHUR  PINERO 

further  motive  in  sharing  with  me  the  privilege  of 
enjoying  Mr.  Renshaw's  estimate  of  the  gentleman 
who  is  to  be  my  husband  ?  "  A  young  gentleman 
excuses  himself  from  a  birthday  party  at  which 
some  shop-girls  are  honouring  him  :  "I  am  going 
to  behave  very  rudely,  I  fear.  A  rather  pressing 
matter  has  arisen  which  necessitates  my  leaving 
you  for  a  few  minutes.  I  throw  myself  on  your 
mercy."  And  then  we  have  this  from  the  mature 
Pinero  of  The  Notorious  Mrs.  Ebbsmiih  : 

Lucas  [going  up  to  her  eagerly].  What  do  you  think  of 
my  essay  ? 

Agnes.     It  bristles  with  truth  ;  it  is  vital. 

Lucas.     My  method  of  treating  it  ? 

Agnes.     Hardly  a  word  out  of  place. 

Lucas  [chilled].    Hardly  a  word  ? 

Agnes.     Not  a  word,  in  fact. 

Lucas.  No,  dear,  I  dare  say  your  "  hardly  "  is  nearer  the 
mark. 

Agnes.    I  assure  you  it  is  brilliant,  Lucas. 

It  must  be  understood  that  Mrs.  Ebbsmith  and 
her  young  politician  are  living  together  on  terms 
of  the  greatest  intimacy  ;  it  must  be  understood, 
I  say,  because  the  fact  is  hardly  to  be  gathered 
from  the  style  of  her  literary  criticism  nor  from 
the  manner  in  which  he  receives  it.  The  notorious 
lady  who  nearly  burned  the  Bible  at  one  moment 
relapses  into  a  speech  in  the  Hyde  Park  manner 
which  earned  for  her  her  earlier  notoriety  ;  con- 
sidering that  her  audience  is  the  cynical  rou6  the 
Duke  of  St.  Olpherts,  who  is  trying  to  part  her  from 

89 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

his  nephew,  the  moment  is  not  well  chosen  ;  but 
it  is  her  incidental  lapses  into  rhetoric  that  are  far 
more  unfortunate,  supposing  it  to  be  of  any  im- 
portance that  we  regard  her  as  a  real  person. 

All  Sir  Arthur  Pinero's  persons  are  unfortunate 
in  this  respect.  If  they  like  the  view,  they  say, 
*'  I  could  gaze  at  this  prospect  for  ever."  They 
say,."  Have  done  !  Have  done  !  "  when  they  wish 
to  convey  that  that  is  enough,  and  "  Pray  complete 
your  sentence,"  when  they  mean  "go  on."  If 
they  wish  to  say  you  are  right,  they  say  "  It  affords 
me  great  pleasure  to  subscribe  to  that,"  and  if 
they  wish  to  say  you  are  wrong,  they  say,  "  You 
are  mistaken  in  the  construction  you  put  upon  it." 
"Be  silent,"  they  say,  and  "Please  to  ring  the 
bell,"  and,  if  they  are  very  strongly  moved,  "  Let 
me  be  rid  of  you  !  "  This  strange  kind  of  speech 
is  held  entirely  in  common.  There  is  the  pleasant 
young  girl  in  the  early  play  (on  no  account  to  be 
mistaken  for  a  comic  character)  who  announces 
that  "  There  are  certain  prescribed  limits  beyond 
which  it  is  not  decorous  for  a  young  person  to  step 
during  the  period  of  engagement.  I  feel  you  are 
travelling  beyond  those  limits."  There  is  the 
sympathetic  curate  in  The  Hobby  Horse  who 
remarks,  "  Let  me  be  rid  of  you  !  Your  money  has 
mildewed  the  bread  with  which  I  feed  the  dear 
ones  who  are  dependent  upon  me,  long  enough  !  " 
There  is  the  pleasant  young  girl  whom  Quex  is 
to  marry,  whose  opinion  of  the  word  "  To-night !  " 
40 


ARTHUR  PINERO 

which  Sophy  overheard  in  the  garden  takes  the 
form  of  "  A  hundred  topics  of  conversation  would 
lead  to  such  an  expression.  You  are  mistaken  in 
the  construction  you  put  upon  it.  The  Duchess 
of  Strood  is  a  most  immaculate  woman."  This 
disturbing  peculiarity  of  Sir  Arthur  Pinero's 
people  becomes  positively  startling  when  they 
speak  in  some  such  terms  of  themselves.  The 
brother  to  the  young  lady  who  marries  the  profligate 
announces  the  intention  of  himself  and  his  sister 
to  remain  "  simple,  light-hearted  boy  and  girl 
for  ever  and  ever."  The  young  woman  who  is 
given  the  benefit  of  the  doubt  is  of  the  opinion 
(with  particular  regard  to  herself)  that  "  Ninety- 
nine  women  out  of  a  hundred  are  kept  fresh  and 
sweet  by  nothing  better  than  mere  sentiment." 
How  poignant  the  cry  of  Paula  Tanqueray  is 
intended  to  be,  "  I've  always  been  a  good  woman  !  " 
"  I,  the  virtuous,  unsoiled  woman  !  "  says  the  lady 
who  supplies  the  Bible  to  Mrs.  Ebbsmith  ;  "  Yes, 
I  am  a  virtuous  woman.  .  .  ."  Even  the  young 
lady  who  found  fame  by  exhorting  us  to  mind  the 
paint  lives  anxious  days  lest  she  should  do  anything 
"  actually  not  nice."  "  Nobody  can  breathe  a 
word  against  my  respectability,"  is  the  proud 
boast  of  Miss  Sophy  Fullgarny.  There  were 
critics  who  held,  when  the  straight  young  English 
girl  in  Mid-Channel  said,   "  Oh,  I  don't  want  to 

boast,  but  I'm  a  straight,  clean  girl ,"  that  the 

remark  was  out  of  her  character.     It  will  be  nearer 

41 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

the  truth  to  say  that  this  conscientious  self- 
revelation  on  the  part  of  Sir  Arthur  Pinero's  people 
is  the  dramatist's  way  of  making  up  for  that 
congenital  absence  of  intimacy  of  which  we  have 
spoken. 

But  it  must  not  be  supposed  from  the  foregoing 
that  Sir  Arthur  Pinero's  people,  when  they  convey 
information  about  themselves  or  about  things  in 
general,  are  content,  in  an  expressive  Americanism, 
to  "  deliver  the  goods."  One  of  the  ways  we  have 
of  recognizing  Sir  Arthur  Pinero's  people  is  by 
their  fondness  for  a  kind  of  allegory.  Says  the 
stockbroker-raisonneur  of  Mid-Channel,  who  has 
himself  devised  the  term  for  a  phase  in  the 
relations  of  married  people  which  makes  the 
play's  title,  "  You  follow  me  ?  You  grasp  the 
poetic  allegory  ?  "  Sir  Arthur  Pinero's  people  put 
a  constant  demand  upon  us  to  grasp  the  poetic 
allegory.  Hugh  Murray,  for  example,  the  sympa- 
thetic solicitor,  strikes  out  on  the  subject  of  wild 
oats,  with  the  profligate  for  auditor  : 

To-morrow,  next  week,  next  month,  you  may  be  happy — 
but  what  of  the  time  when  those  wild  oats  thrust  their  ears 
through  the  very  seams  of  the  fioor  trodden  by  the  wife 
whose  respect  you  will  have  learned  to  covet  I  You  may 
drag  her  into  the  crowded  streets — there  is  the  same  vile 
growth  springing  up  from  the  chinks  of  the  pavement !  In 
your  house,  or  in  the  open,  the  scent  of  the  mildewed  grain 
always  in  your  nostrils,  and  in  your  ears  no  music  but  the 
wind's  rustle  amongst  the  fat  sheaves  I  And,  worst  of  all, 
your  wife's  heart  a  granary  bursting  with  the  load  of  shame 
your  profligacy  has  stored  there  !  I  warn  you,  etc. 
42 


ARTHUR  PINERO 

Dick  Phenyl,  the  sympathetic  though  drunken 
barrister,  makes  great  play  with  the  story  of 
Cinderella  at  a  crisis  in  the  action.  Just  as  Hilary 
Jesson,  British  Minister  to  the  Republic  of  Santa 
Guarda  and  raisonneur-in-ordinary  to  the  house- 
hold at  Overbury  Towers,  makes  great  play  with  a 
story  about  a  chef.  Marriage,  to  Mrs.  Ebbsmith, 
is  "  the  choked-up,  seething  pit  "  ;  loss  of  repu- 
tation, to  Cayley  Drummle,  "  the  social  Dead  Sea  "  ; 
herself,  to  Mrs.  Tanqueray,  "  a  candle  that  gutters." 
Even  Lord  Quex,  between  his  gallantries,  has  time 
to  embroider  a  little  on  the  theme  of  turning  over  a 
new  leaf.  Sir  Arthur  Pinero's  use  of  poetic  allegory 
is  so  much  his  own,  and  the  British  theatre's,  that 
we  need  not  look  for  influences.  When  Mrs. 
Ebbsmith  says  of  her  Lucas,  "  He  is  my  child,  my 
husband,  my  lover,  my  bread,  my  daylight — all — 
everything.  Mine  !  Mine  !  "  and  to  the  cynical 
Duke  of  all  people,  well,  we  think  of  her  unfor- 
tunate training  in  Hyde  Park  ;  but  when  we  find 
her  talking  of  her  Hour,  her  Hour,  we  may 
remember  that  although  her  creator  did  not 
approve  of  "  the  small  despairing  message  from 
the  great  voice  of  Henrik  Ibsen,"  he  would  not  be 
Sir  Arthur  Pinero  if  he  had  not  been  willing  to 
catch  some  tones  of  the  great  voice. 

In  all  Sir  Arthur  Pinero's  people  there  is  some- 
thing we  must  call  vulgarity  for  lack  of  a  better 
word.  His  young  women  are  "  just  a  leetle  rapid." 
Directly  the  news  of  poor  pa's  death  came,  "  Ma 

43 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

took  off  her  corsets,"  in  The  Benefit  of  the  Doubt; 
and  she  repeats  the  process  at  crises  in  the  play's 
action.  "  Women — God  bless  'em  !  "  says  Sir 
Arthur  Pinero's  ideal  man,  with  a  kind  of  imagi- 
native slap  on  the  back.  "  That  nice  gal,"  is  the 
word  of  Sir  Chichester  Frayne  or  Mr.  Peter  Mottram 
for  the  creamy  English  girl,  "  beautiful  pink  and 
white  right  through."  Miriam,  Marchioness  of 
Castlejordan,  would  like  to  have  been  the  mother 
of  a  "  complete  boy  "  ;  as  it  is,  her  daughter  the 
Amazon,  carried  upstairs  by  a  young  man,  has  to 
answer  the  question,  "  Think  he  guessed  you — 
weren't  the — usual  sort  of  young  man  ?  "  When 
the  Duchess  and  Quex  were  together  at  Stockholm 
it  will  be  remembered  she  entered  nothing  indiscreet 
in  her  diary — "  only  the  words,  '  warm  evening.'  " 
But  to  point  to  this  quality  in  Sir  Arthur  Pinero's 
people  is  not  for  one  moment  to  bring  a  charge 
of  indelicacy  against  his  drama.  When  a  Duchess 
undresses,  or  a  Princess  gets  out  of  bed  of  a  morning, 
or  a  lady  of  musical  comedy  puts  on  her  stockings, 
the  dramatist  always  arranges  that  she  shall  be 
concealed  by  a  screen  or  a  table  ;  while  his  people, 
even  when  moved  by  the  conviction  of  infidelity  to 
the  point  at  which  they  break  furniture,  have  no 
plainer  word  than  "  trull  "  in  their  vocabulary. 
When  Mrs.  Ebbsmith  suggests  to  her  lover  that 
their  union  should  be  "  devoid  of  passion,"  she 
averts  her  eyes.  And  is  not  the  passage  in  The 
Second  Mrs.  Tanqueray  quite  perfectly  delicate? 
44 


ARTHUR  PINERO 

Drummle.     In  Heaven's  name,  tell  me  what's  happened  ? 
Aubrey  [gripping  Drummle's  arm].     Paula  !   Paula  ! 
Drummle.     What  ? 

Aubrey.     They  met  to-night  here.  They — they — they're 
not  strangers  to  each  other. 

No,  there  is  no  possible  case  on  which  to  sustain 
a  charge  of  verbal  indelicacy.  But  all  Sir  Arthur 
Pinero's  people  might  live  very  happily  in  that 
up-river  villa  where  the  doll  is  affixed  by  a  cord 
through  the  ceiling  to  the  couch  in  the  room 
above,  and  make  jokes  about  "  Rippingill  versus 
Rippingill,  Bowen,  Fletcher,  Hedderwick,  and 
Rideout — there  were  no  more."  At  least  they 
would  not  find  the  atmosphere  oppressive  there. 

Perhaps  this  is  the  place  to  record  that  it  has 
been  pointed  out  on  Sir  Arthur  Pinero's  behalf 
that  the  purpose  of  his  comic  drama  is  to  satirize 
vulgar  people.  "It  is  well  known,"  says  his 
critic,^  "that  Mr.  Pinero  holds  decided  views  of 
his  own  as  to  the  nature  and  function  of  farce  ; 
indeed  he  claims  for  it  a  wider  scope  and  more 
comprehensive  purpose  than  have  ever  been 
associated  with  farce  of  the  old  Adelphi  type,  or 
the  more  modern  genus  of  the  Palais  Royal.  He 
has  openly  expressed  his  opinion  that  farce  must 
gradually  become  the  modern  equivalent  of  comedy, 
since  the  present  being  an  age  of  sentiment  rather 
than  of  manners,  the  comic  playwright  must  of 
necessity  seek  his  humour  in  the  exaggeration  of 

^  Mr.  Malcolm  C.  Salaman,  introduction  to  The  Times. 

45 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

sentiment.  Thus  Mr.  Pinero  holds  that  farce 
should  treat  of  probable  people  placed  in  possible 
circumstances,  but  regarded  from  a  point  of  view 
which  exaggerates  their  sentiments  and  magnifies 
their  foibles.  In  this  light  it  is  permitted  to  this 
class  of  play,  not  only  to  deal  with  ridiculous 
incongruities  of  incident  and  character,  but  to 
satirize  society,  and  to  wring  laughter  from  those 
possible  distresses  of  life  which  might  trace  their 
origin  to  fallacies  of  feeling  and  extravagancies  of 
motive." 

Certainly  Sir  Arthur  Pinero  has  achieved  humour, 
intentional  or  unintentional,  in  the  exaggeration 
of  sentiment.  Certainly  he  has  used  his  theatrical 
talent  to  wring  laughter  from  vulgar  people  in 
his  comic  drama,  as  he  has  used  it  to  wring  thea- 
trical emotion  from  them  in  his  serious.  A  gentle- 
man who  says,  "  Miaou  !  miaou !  puss,  puss, 
puss  !  "  when  he  is  offered  a  sausage-roll,  is,  it  is 
only  kind  to  suppose,  a  vulgar  person  satirized. 
But  his  best  play  does  not  satirize  vulgar  people  ; 
it  tries  to  understand  them.  At  this  stage  in  our 
proceedings,  it  will  be  almost  necessary  to  provide  a 
separate  category  for  Mid-Channel.  The  dramatist 
knows  the  Blundells,  and,  as  a  consequence,  we 
feel  we  know  them  too.  Zoe  had  a  "  hell  of  a  row 
last  night  "  ;  and  she  drifts  from  a  hell  of  a  row 
to  a  hell  of  a  mess.  She  takes  us  with  her,  as  she 
"  goes  her  mucker."  Admiration  may  be  pointed 
to  the  skill  with  which  the  true  motivity  to  the 
46 


ARTHUR  PINERO 

tragedy,  childlessness,  is  deferred  in  its  revelation 
to  nearly  the  end  of  the  third  act — "  I  want  you 
to  remember  that  bargain,  in  judging  me  ;  and  I 
want  you  to  tell  Peter  dt  it."  It  may  be  pointed 
to  the  skill  in  dramatic  preparation  shown  in  the 
masterly  fourth  act,  "  Mother,  do  come  and  look 
at  the  tiny  men  and  women  " — from  the  balcony, 
that  is,  from  which  Zoe  is  to  throw  herself  down. 
This  is  a  fruit  of  that  hard  study  and  long  practice 
of  which  we  found  the  dramatist  speaking ;  it 
is  a  touch  from  the  same  hand  that  tinkled  audibly 
Maldonado's  latchkey.  In  this  act  we  may  see 
theatrical  talent  subserving  dramatic  imagina- 
tion ;  can  it  be  that  that  is  the  truer  relation 
than  the  one  we  heard  Sir  Arthur  Pinero  enounce  ? 
Certain  it  is  that  Mid-Channel  is  the  best  of 
Sir  Arthur  Pinero's  plays.  We  may  still  have 
doubts  about  the  husband  who  goes  straight  off  to 
drink  and  an  impossible  woman  the  moment  his 
wife  leaves  him ;  we  may  have  doubts  about 
the  straight,  clean  girl — aged  twenty- six — who 
"  oughtn't  to  know  about  such  things  "  ;  but  we 
do  not  wish  to  doubt  Zoe  or  the  manner  of  her 
"  mucker."  Mid-Channel,  we  would  say,  is  the 
play  Sir  Arthur  Pinero  wrote  because  he  wanted 
to  write  it,  rather  than  because  the  theatre  was 
of  opinion  that  a  new  play  was  due  ;  and  when 
he  had  written  it,  it  failed,  under  an  ironic  fate, 
to  keep  its  theatre  open. 

Nor  must  this  last  of  the  major  plays  be  left 

47 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

until  we  have  noted  in  it  a  kind  of  technical 
self-consciousness  which  is  important  in  illuminat- 
ing much  that  has  gone  before.  "  Times  have 
changed,  master,"  says  Scaramel  to  Pierrot  in 
the  third  act  of  the  fantasy.  Through  this  play 
also  there  runs  a  vein  of  knowledge  that  the  times 
have  changed.  "  There's  too  much  of  this  trying 
to  say  something  fresh  on  every  subject,"  says 
Peter  Mottram  ;  it  is — may  we  fancy  ? — his 
master's  voice.  When  marriage  is  compared  to  a 
pair  of  horses  that  stop  prancing  and  settle  down 
to  a  trot — a  piece  of  poetic  allegory  that  would 
have  passed  without  apology  in  Mrs.  Tanqueray — 
here  in  Mid-Channel  it  must  be  taken  care  of  as 
"  a  worm-eaten  illustration."  Even  the  "  tactics," 
war-proven  in  how  many  campaigns,  are  not 
immune  from  self-criticism.  "  You  are  full  of 
information,  mother,"  is  the  protective  reproof 
incurred  by  Mrs.  Pierpoint  when,  to  give  her  justice, 
she  is  doing  no  more  in  the  matter  of  first-act 
usefulness  than  had  been  done,  far  more  flagrantly, 
by  her  predecessors  for  a  quarter  of  a  century. 
The  consciousness  that  times  change,  and  with  them 
things  dramatic,  is  as  much  a  part  of  Mid-Channel 
as  it  is  of  Trelawney  of  the  "  Wells  "  ;  whose  Tom 
Wrench,  it  will  be  remembered,  was  a  loyal  portrait 
of  Robertson  the  master. 

In  a  drama  which,  in  the  main,  by  keeping 
character  subservient  to  action,  has  satisfied,  at 
least  in  the  letter,  the  precept  of  Aristotle,  the 
48 


ARTHUR  PINERO 

true  and  pathetic  figure  of  Zoe  Blundell  stands 
rather  alone.  For  the  rest,  the  dramatis  personse 
drilled  and  marshalled  beneath  the  hand  of  Sir 
Arthur  Pinero,  whether  for  purposes  of  serious 
or  of  comic  demonstration,  are  amenable  enough 
types — "  probable  people  placed  in  possible  cir- 
cumstances." We  may,  if  we  like,  give  it  as  our 
opinion  that  the  Mortimores  are  placed  in  more 
probable  circumstances  than  the  Ridgeleys,  that 
the  persons  who  revolve  about  Letty,  or  the  girl 
who  sang  about  the  paint,  are  either  more  or  less 
possible  than  the  persons  of  CHrls  and  Boys  or  The 
Times ;  but,  Ridgeleys  or  Mortimores,  photo- 
graphers or  palmists  or  dukes  or  dilettanti  of  the 
musical  "  drama,"  Mrs.  Tanqueray  or  Mrs.  Ebb- 
smith  or  Iris  Bellamy  or  Sophy  Fullgarney  or 
Renshaw  or  Maldonado  or  Quex,  Sir  Arthur 
Pinero's  people  have  not  forgotten  the  days 
through  which  they  were  obedient  figures  in  a 
practical  dramatist's  toy  theatre  for  the  invention 
of  well-made  plays.  Character,  in  the  Pinero 
theatre,  being  a  matter  that  is  remembered  only 
after  strategy  and  tactics  have  had  their  due, 
does  but  rarely  surprise  us ;  be  it  a  hairdresser, 
his  talk  is  of  "  the  untidiest  chin  in  the  Inner 
Temple " ;  a  Frenchman,  "  Necessity  is  the 
mother  of  objecting  to  a  smoking  carriage  "  ;  an 
agricultural  labourer,  "I  be  a  poor  agricultural 
labourer  "  ;  a  young  wife,  "  I  think,  sir — whatever 
Clement  thinks,  always  "  ;   a  straight  clean  young 

D  49 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

English  girl,  let  her  say  so,  and  have  done.  It  may 
be  summarized  as  the  organization  of  the  expected. 
Most  useful  of  all  in  the  familiar  regiment  of 
persons  is  the  raisonneur,  the  family's  disinterested 
visitor,  the  practical  dramatist's  friend  ;  the  man 
without  whom  no  well-made  play  is  complete, 
for  may  not  information  at  all  hours  of  the  day 
and  night  be  conveyed  to  him,  and  through  him 
to  us  ?  His  name  is,  in  successive  reincarnations, 
Hugh  Murray,  Cayley  Drummle,  Croker  Harrington, 
Hilary  Jesson,  Peter  Mottram  ;  but,  whatever  his 
name,  his  character  is  not  greatly  different  from 
that  given  to  Hilary,  "  a  type  of  the  genial,  peren- 
nially fresh  cosmopolitan."  He  it  is  who,  having  ex- 
pended himself  in  disinterested  labours,  murmurs, 
"  My  dear  old  pals  !  "  and,  before  he  withdraws, 
stands  for  a  moment  looking  lingeringly  at  those 
he  has  happily  reconciled.  He  it  is — sitting, 
perhaps,  late  at  night  over  the  fire  with  a  woman, 
between  him  and  whom  there  is  "  never  one  single 
thought  of  anything  but  friendship  on  either  side  " 
— who  voices  the  practical,  comforting  message  from 
one  person  of  the  world  to  another  that  is  Sir 
Arthur  Pinero's  :  "  Don't  fret ;  it'll  be  all  the  same 
a  hundred  years  hence,"  or  something  of  that 
kind.  It  is  a  little  message  in  a  great  voice.  Sir 
Arthur  Pinero  set  some  words  on  the  title-page  of 
an  early  play  :  "I  don't  aspire  to  great  things, 
but  I  wish  to  speak  of  great  things  with  gratitude 
and  of  mean  things  with  indignation."  His 
50 


ARTHUR  PINERO 

people's  world  is  St.  James's,  "  our  little  parish 
of  St.  James's,"  as  the  good  Cay  ley  has  it ;  their 
concern  is  that  by  Goodwood  week  the  reputation 
of  some  one  who  has  been  foolish,  perhaps,  but 
not  guilty,  shall  be  sound  as  any  woman's  in 
England ;  and  their  creator  has  little  patience 
with  the  "  parochial  pessimism "  of  the  Ibsen 
drama.  "We  poor  modern  playwrights,"  says 
he,  "  will  not  be  found  wanting  at  least  in  the 
endeavour  to  respond  to  lofty  and  heroic  inspira- 
tion." 

And  yet  it  is  not  so  much  for  lofty  and  heroic 
inspiration  that  the  Pinero  drama  is  notable,  as 
for  the  complete  efficiency  with  which  it  has 
discharged  its  various  yet  unvarying  purpose. 
We  have  seen  this  drama  take  its  rise  in  the 
drama  with  a  rural  setting,  and  in  the  drama 
of  "girls"  and  "boys."  When  the  theatre 
wanted  sweet  lavender,  an  ample  supply  was 
conceded  ;  when  "  Ghosts  "  and  "  Hedda  Gabler  " 
were  heard  of,  it  was  Sir  Arthur  Pinero  who  gave 
the  theatre  a  profligate  and  a  Paula  Tanqueray  ; 
when  England  was  in  need  of  a  Drama  with  which 
to  front  Europe,  it  was  Sir  Arthur  Pinero  who 
was  found  to  have  supplied  it.  This  cumulative 
ability  to  give  of  the  best  that  he  knew  is  the 
essence  of  the  achievement  of  Sir  Arthur  Pinero. 
Even  in  the  comic  plays  that  small  boy  in  the  early 
farce  who  set  fire  to  the  house  with  a  firework  only 
reaches  his  true  apotheosis  in  the  third  act  of 

51 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

Mr.  Panmure ;  there  is  no  scene  in  the  Court 
Theatre  farces  which  goes  off  with  this  stately 
precision  of  the  set-piece.  Perhaps  it  would  not 
have  been  possible  for  Sir  Arthur  Pinero  to  have 
achieved  the  first  act  of  The  Thunderbolt  if  the 
third  act  of  "  The  Voysey  Inheritance  "  had  not 
shown  him  the  way.  Certainly  it  would  not  have 
been  possible  for  Sir  Arthur  Pinero  to  make  The 
Profligate  that  determined  essay  in  conjugal 
unhappiness  he  himself  achieved  in  Mid-Channel. 
In  the  drama  of  Sir  Arthur  Pinero  we  may  find 
in  actual  epitome  the  answers  to  a  generation  of 
anxious  questionings,  Is  the  Drama  Advancing  ? 
No  other  hand  could  project  characters  so  well 
fitted  to  the  favourite  actors  of  his  generation, 
or  cause  them  to  tell  so  interesting  a  story  through 
the  medium  of  dialogue.  No  other  hand  could 
devise  such  skilful  form  and  order  as,  within  the 
limits  of  an  ordinary  theatrical  representation,  to 
give  rise  to  so  great  an  amount  of  that  peculiar 
kind  of  emotional  effect,  the  production  of  which 
was  the  one  great  function  of  his  theatre.  No 
other  hand,  in  fact,  could  supply  so  efficiently  the 
actual  demand.  When,  in  the  fullness  of  time 
and  honours.  Sir  Arthur  Pinero  has  need  of  an 
epitaph,  it  may  well  be  this  :  He  kept  the  theatres 
open. 


52 


II 

HENRY  ARTHUR  JONES 

THE  English  drama  of  his  day,  said  Matthew 
Arnold,  lay  between  the  heavens  and  the 
earth ;  it  was  neither  realistic  nor  ideal- 
istic, but  just  "  fantastic."  He  could  not  have 
put  it  more  kindly. 

Sir  Arthur  Pinero  once  disclaimed  "  any  absolute 
and  inherent  superiority  for  our  modern  realistic 
technique  "  ;  but  in  making  this  disclaimer  on 
behalf  of  his  own  plays  he  did  not  use  terms  in 
the  sense  in  which  they  will  be  used  in  this  book. 
Even  so,  he  set  up  a  banner  under  which  Mr. 
Henry  Arthur  Jones,  for  one,  would  not  serve.  A 
French  critic,  M.  Augustin  Filon,  writing  of  the 
drama  of  the  early  nineties  in  England,  has  left 
it  on  record  that  "  Mr.  Jones  will  not  hear  of  the 
'  well-made  '  piece  ;  he  seems  to  have  recognized 
that  the  architecture  of  a  play  does  not  count  for 
much,  and  that  the  science  of  Scribe  and  Sardou 
is  a  snare.  Nor  will  he  hear  of  realism  or  of  logic." 
Mr.  Jones,  saysM.  Filon,  was  for  "  Beauty,  Mystery, 

53 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

Passion,  and  Imagination.  The  drama,  he  is  con- 
vinced, is  returning  to  the  mysterious  and  imagi- 
native side  of  human  life."  But  we  may  listen 
to  the  dramatist  himself. 

For  Mr.  Henry  Arthur  Jones  is  one  who,  like 
Mr.  Bernard  Shaw,  has  written  a  great  deal  about 
his  own  art,  and  by  no  means  left  his  plays,  as  Sir 
Arthur  Pinero  for  the  most  part  has  done,  to  the 
exposition  of  the  critics.  The  secret  of  Mr.  Jones's 
dissatisfaction  with  the  teacup- and- saucer  school 
of  Robertson,  which  Matthew  Arnold  objected  to  as 
*'  fantastic,"  is  rather  that  it  "  exactly  copied  and 
reproduced  the  littlenesses  of  social  life."  He 
concedes  to  Robertson  that  he  gave  to  the  theatre 
"  a  greater  air  of  vraisemblance "  ;  but  his 
summary  is  that  Robertson  "  drew  many  pleasing 
characters  and  scenes,  most  of  them  as  essentially 
false  as  the  falsities  and  theatricalities  he  supposed 
himself  to  be  superseding."  Now  to  the  playgoer 
of  our  day  this  summary  may  well  stand  as  a 
verdict ;  but  the  playgoer  of  our  day  will  be 
pardoned,  I  think,  if  he  confess  his  inability  to 
conceive  of  a  drama  with  a  smaller  air  of  vraisem- 
blance than  Robertson's.  Suppose,  however,  that 
he  concede  the  air  of  vraisemblance ;  it  was 
nothing  more  than  a  device  on  the  part  of  a 
practising  dramatist  to  keep  the  theatres  open — 
a  new  device,  if  you  will,  since  vraisemblance, 
from  the  era  of  "  Black-Eyed  Susan  "  to  the  era  of 
"  Still  Waters  Run  Deep,"  had  been  a  great  stranger 
.54 


HENRY  ARTHUR  JONES 

to  the  English  drama.  What  exactly  did  Mr.  Jones 
mean  by  saying  that  "  Caste "  or  "  School " 
"  reproduced  the  littlenesses  of  social  life  "  ?  Do 
they  reproduce  the  littlenesses  of  social  life  in  the 
manner  in  which  De  Hooch's  Court  of  a  Dutch 
House  or  Jan  S teen's  Music  Master  reproduces 
them  ?  If  the  dramatist's  purpose  in  drawing  his 
picture  of  the  interior  of  the  Eccles  household  was 
to  "  copy  "  the  life  of  a  real  household  of  that  grade, 
it  can  only  be  said  that  he  did  not  succeed  in 
making  a  very  good  copy.  If  Mr.  Jones  meant 
that  by  copying  life,  occurrence  by  occurrence,  like 
the  photographer  for  a  halfpenny  newspaper,  the 
dramatist  did  not  go  the  right  way  about  to  produce 
a  work  of  art,  we  could  understand  him.  Then, 
even  supposing  Robertson  had  the  ability  to 
reproduce  successfully  the  manner  of  human 
speech  or  the  nature  of  human  character — which 
he  had  not — we  might  agree  with  Mr.  Jones  that 
the  result  was  "  essentially  false."  But  it  appears 
that  Mr.  Jones  meant  something  quite  different. 
He  meant  that  the  reproduction  of  the  littlenesses 
of  social  life  is  no  work  for  the  drama  at  all.  He 
meant  to  deny  the  desirability,  or  at  least  the 
practicability,  of  reality  in  the  theatre.  "The 
theatre  is  here,"  he  said,  in  effect,  "to  be  kept 
open.  I  have  kept  it  open  with  little  pieces  called 
Harmony,  A  Clerical  Error,  Sweet  Will,  and  so  on, 
of  the  same  kind  and  quality  as  Mr.  Pinero's  little 
story  of  mysterious  Hester.     I  have  kept  it  open 

55 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

with   melodramas,    such   as   The  Silver  King,   in 

collaboration  with  a  Mr.  Herman,  of  which  Mr. 

Archer  conceived  great  hopes.     I   have  kept  it 

open  with  a  realistic  play  called  Saints  and  Sinners. 

In  collaboration  with  the  same  Mr.  Herman,  I  have 

even  succeeded  in  keeping  it  open,  for  a  short  time, 

with  the  '  Doll's  House  '  of  Ibsen,  a  '  Doll's  House,' 

it  is  true,  without  a  Dr.  Rank,  with  an  ending  of 

general  reconciliation,  and  with  the  new  name  of 

Breaking  a  Butterfly.     I  am  above  all  a  practical 

dramatist.     My  plays  will  never  be  found  to  forget 

the  purposes  of  the  theatre  ;  but  I  now  propose  to 

keep  it  open  by  returning  to  the  mysterious  and 

imaginative  side  of  human  life." 

That  is  our  own  gloss  upon  the  utterances  of  Mr. 
Henry  Arthur  Jones. 

But  in  the  year  of  his  own  Judah  the  dramatist 
himself  put  his  views  about  Realism  and  Truth  in 
this  way.  "The  most  stupendous  difficulty,"  he 
wrote,  "  the  most  outrageous  convention,  meets 
the  realist  on  the  very  threshold  of  the  theatre. 
For  the  purposes  of  the  stage,  human  lives  have  to 
be  woven  into  a  consecutive  story,  and  this  story 
has  to  be  chopped  into  three  or  four  acts  of  an 
average  three-quarters  of  an  hour  each.  There 
may  be,  indeed  there  are,  dramatic  moments  in 
the  lives  of  all ;  there  may  have  been  dramatic 
scenes  of  two  or  three  minutes  in  the  connected  lives 
of  two  or  three  people  ;  but  never  in  this  world 
was  there  anything  approaching  to  a  dramatic 
56 


HENRY  ARTHUR  JONES 

three-quarters  of  an  hour  in  the  lives  of  half  a  dozen 
or  a  dozen  people,  passing  in  such  a  way  and  with 
such  a  volume  and  variety  of  incident  and  emotion 
as  to  be  satisfactory  or  even  endurable  in  repre- 
sentation to  a  modern  audience."  ^  So  that, 
since  realism  cannot  be  truth,  we  are  to  content 
ourselves  with  Beauty,  Mystery,  Passion,  and 
Imagination,  chopped  into  three  or  four  acts  of 
an  average  three-quarters  of  an  hour.  The  bargain 
sounds  not  a  bad  one  ;  but  before  we  leave  it  at 
that,  let  us  make  sure  that  Mr.  Jones  fully  under- 
stood what  Matthew  Arnold  meant  when  he  denied 
realism  to  the  English  drama  of  Robertson.  It 
happens  that  Mr.  Jones,  in  the  course  of  his 
addresses  upon  the  drama,  has  clenched  the  matter 
for  us  in  a  paragraph.  Let  us  give  it  prominence 
here  : 

I  lately  saw  a  drawing  of  Turner's  called  "  Llanthony 
Abbey.  "...  It  was  one  of  the  most  beautiful  tran- 
scripts from  Nature  that  I  have  ever  looked  upon.  But 
the  whole  picture  was  not  two  feet  square.  You  could 
never  mistake  it  for  a  real  Abbey  and  real  hills. 

Now  that  is  clear.  We  understand  at  once  what 
Mr.  Jones  means  by  realism,  and  we  understand 
why,  as  a  practical  dramatist,  he  has  had  nothing 
to  do  with  it. 

There  are  three  kinds  of  "  realism  " — if  we 
omit  the  doctrine  of  the  schools  with  which  we  here 
have  nothing  to  do.     There  is  the  lawyer's  realism, 

^  Letter  to  New  York  Dramatic  Mirror,  April  19,  1890. 

57 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

the    actor-manager's    realism,    and    the    artist's 
reahsm.     A  thing  is  real,   to  the  lawyer,   when, 
like  a  house  or  a  piece  of  land,  it  cannot  be  moved. 
Llanthony  Abbey  and  the  surrounding  country, 
since  they  cannot  be  moved,  are  real  property  ; 
Llanthony  Abbey  and  its  hills  transferred  to  the 
boards  of  a  London  theatre,  are  "  properties,"  but 
are  no  longer  "  real."     When  Mr.  Jones  pointed 
to  this  fact,  he  spoke  like  a  lawyer ;    except  that 
no  lawyer  even  would  think  of  going  over  a  drawing 
by  Turner  with  a  foot-rule  to  convince  himself  that 
it  was  not  an  abbey.     But  a  real  property  to  the 
actor-manager   is    something   different.     Wolsey's 
cloak  is  a  real  property,  if  he  himself  bought  it 
at  an  auction  sale  or  borrowed  it  from  some  one 
who  can  assure  him  that  it  once  was  actually  worn 
by   Wolsey.     But   the    actor-manager   is    not   so 
careful  in  his  terms  as  he  might  be  ;    for  he  will 
go  on  to  congratulate  himself  on  the  "  realism  " 
of  his  Llanthony  Abbey  and  its   hills  if  he  do 
but  build  them  up  in  lath  and  painted  canvas.    A 
property  is  real  to  the  actor-manager  if  it  cost 
a  great  deal  of  money  and  is  so  solid  that  he 
may  lean  against  it ;    the  transference  of  Picca- 
dilly Circus  to  his  stage,  landmark  by  landmark, 
and  taxicab  by  taxicab,  is  a  triumph  of  "  realism  " 
to  the  actor-manager,  even  if,  when  he  has  got 
his    lath   and   canvas   there,    it   does   not   really 
resemble   Piccadilly   Circus   in   the   least.     There 
remains  the   artist's  realism.     It   is  because  the 
58 


HENRY  ARTHUR  JONES 

artist  does  not  talk  so  much  about  his  realism 
that  the  lawyer's  realism  and  the  actor-manager's 
realism  hold  the  field.  The  actor-manager's  under- 
standing of  realism,  in  its  second  sense,  is  parti- 
cularly prevalent.  The  people  whose  business 
it  is  to  write  little  notes  upon  the  new  novels  in 
the  papers,  when  they  say  that  a  work  is  "  all  duly 
realistic  and  depressing,"  are  saying  two  things  : 
they  are  saying  that  it  has  been  the  attempt  of 
the  novelist  to  transfer  the  reality  of  life  to  the 
printed  page,  and  they  are  voicing  a  personal 
opinion  that  they  do  not  like  their  novels  to  do 
that ;  but  the  one  thing  they  do  not  say  is  whether 
the  transference  of  life  to  the  printed  page  is 
well  or  ill  done.  Their  understanding  of  realism 
is  the  actor-manager's  ;  here  is  Piccadilly  Circus  at 
midnight,  they  say,  with  the  Criterion  with  white 
lights  duly  facing  the  Monico  with  pink  and  several 
taxicabs  that  are  authentic.  Because,  in  their 
opinion,  there  have  been  too  many  novels  about 
Piccadilly  Circus  at  midnight,  they  take  the  actor- 
manager's  term  "  realism,"  and  give  to  it  a  special 
connotation  of  reproach.  This  special  connotation 
of  reproach  entitles  the  term,  I  suppose,  to  a  fourth 
category  of  critic's  realism.  But  there  still  remains 
the  artist's  realism.  The  artist,  consciously  or 
unconsciously,  implicitly  or  explicitly,  tells  us 
that  it  is  a  very  difficult  thing  to  see.  He  tells 
us  that  it  is  a  very  difficult  thing  really  to  see  and 
really  to  hear.     He  makes  us  aware  that  most  of 

59 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

the  pictures  are  painted,  and  most  of  the  plays  and 
novels  written,  by  industrious  people  who  can 
neither  see  nor  hear.  It  is  possible  that,  if  they 
had  tried,  they  might  have  learned  to  do  these 
difficult  things  ;  but  it  is  more  likely  that  they 
were  born  blind  and  deaf,  although  not,  unfor- 
tunately, dumb.  Every  artist  is  an  artist  by  virtue 
of  his  superior  awareness  of  life.  Art  is  the  means 
by  which  life  is  made  clear  to  us  ;  the  power  of 
the  artist  is  the  power  by  which  its  inner  essences 
are  released,  its  escapable  truths  revealed,  its 
elusive  values  co-ordinated.  The  demand  for  art 
is  constant,  and  that  is  why,  if  artists  are  wanting, 
its  functions  are  performed  by  not-artists.  These 
are  the  blind  who  lead  the  blind,  and,  since  all  are 
blind  together,  nothing  is  easier  than  to  agree 
upon  a  little  code.  You  wish  to  be  told  about  life  ? 
say  the  not-artists.  We  cannot  clearly  see  its  lines, 
nor  have  we  the  power  or  patience  to  wait  upon  its 
voice  ;  but  let  us  agree  that  it  looks  after  this 
fashion,  and  speaks  after  that,  and  then,  with  you 
the  audience  lending  your  agreement,  our  invention 
will  enable  us  to  keep  you  famously  supplied. 
This  Braille  system  is  one  with  which  the  artist 
who  has  a  right  pride  in  his  faculties  will  have 
nothing  to  do.  When  he  looks  at  life  he  sees  it, 
according  to  his  power  ;  and  he  sees  it  to  be  dilTe- 
rent  from  the  pretty  picture  the  not-artists  have 
agreed  upon.  Its  voice  he  hears  to  be  a  different 
voice,  because  his  ear  is  tuned  to  its  lower  tones 
60 


HENRY  ARTHUR  JONES 

that  have  quite  escaped  the  others.  When  they 
did  not  see,  when  they  did  not  hear,  they  agreed 
upon  conventions.  Not-art  is  always  made  up  of 
the  expected  ;  art  of  the  unexpected.  In  art  we 
may  recognize  the  truth,  and  that  is  delightful ; 
we  may  be  surprised  with  the  deeper  truth,  and 
that  is  still  more  delightful ;  but  not- art  gives  us 
neither  the  pleasures  of  recognition  nor  surprise,  it 
is  the  tedious  repetition  of  the  expected. 

It  is  very  difficult  to  look  at  life,  then,  and  to  see 
it,  not  as  you  expected  to  see  it,  but  as  it  is.  Art 
is  not  life  ;  it  is  the  transference  of  an  essence  into 
a  vessel  that  is  the  artist's  own — a  vessel  whose 
form  is  determined  by  the  conditions  of  that  art's 
acceptance.  The  drama,  for  example,  can  come 
to  its  public  only  through  the  theatre,  and  the 
dramatic  artist  shapes  his  vision  of  life  for  accept- 
ance there.  But  this  act  of  transference  is  difficult, 
and  the  greatest  artist  is  he  who  achieves  it  with 
least  spilled.  The  not- artist  is  he  who  says, 
because  this  is  difficult  I  will  not  make  the  attempt, 
but  will  stay  in  my  theatre  and  speak  loudly  of  the 
immutability  of  its  conditions.  Now  this  essence 
of  life  may  be  well  called  its  reality  ;  and  the 
method  which  secures  its  transference  without 
diminution,  to  the  theatre  or  to  the  printed  page, 
may  be  called  the  method  of  realism,  although 
less  well.  Realism,  to  speak  strictly,  is  not  a 
method  or  a  theory,  it  is  this  care  for  undiminished 
reality,  that  is  all ;  this  care  which  is  unconsciously 

61 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

a  part  of  all  art  that  is  romantic,  and  whose  claims 
need  only  to  be  made  separately  vocal  when  the 
classic  is  running  into  the  decadent.  The  theatre 
of  the  mid- nineteenth  century  in  Europe,  in  so  far 
as  it  was  an  art  at  all,  was  a  decadent  art ;  and 
that  is  the  "  real  "-ists'  and  the  "  natural  "-ists' 
sufficient  apology.  Realism — which  is  a  better 
word  than  naturalism,  because  Nature  has  nothing 
to  do  with  art,  while  reality  has  a  very  great  deal — 
may  be  elevated  into  a  theory  or  method,  if  we 
choose  to  think  of  it  not  merely  as  the  artist's 
abiding  care  that  reality  shall  suffer  no  diminution, 
but  as  a  positive  process  by  which,  after  his  subject- 
matter  has  been  re-created  in  his  imagination,  it 
is  dipped  into  actuality  again,  as  though  to  make 
fast  its  dyes.  To  Mr.  Arthur  Symons,  the  best 
English  critic  since  Arnold,  "  the  theory  of  Realism 
is  that  (a  man's)  emotions  and  ideas  are  to  be  given 
only  in  so  far  as  the  words  at  his  command  can 
give  them,"  whereas  the  Idealist,  "  choosing  to 
concern  himself  only  with  exceptional  characters, 
and  with  them  only  in  the  absolute,  invents  for 
them  a  more  elaborate  and  a  more  magnificent 
speech  than  they  would  naturally  employ,  the 
speech  of  their  thoughts,  of  their  dreams."  The 
English  drama  of  the  time  of  Robertson  was  neither 
given  in  the  words  that  were  at  the  command  of 
the  people  it  pretended  to  portray,  nor  was  its 
speech  magnificent ;  it  was  "  just  fantastic."  But 
whatever  we  mean  by  realism,  so  long  as  we  do  not 
62 


HENRY  ARTHUR  JONES 

mean  what  the  lawyers  mean  nor  what  the  actor- 
managers  fancy  they  mean,  we  shall  be  pointing  to 
that  quality  in  a  work  of  art  by  which  the  reality 
of  life  is  given,  within  the  conventions  that  are 
proper  and  necessary  to  the  art,  without  diminution. 
The  term  has,  in  its  general  applications,  but  a 
negative  usefulness.  To  say  that  a  work  which 
purports  to  picture  life  is  lacking  in  realism,  is  to 
say  that  it  is  not  a  good  picture.  But  to  say  that 
it  has  realism  is,  or  should  be,  a  work  of  superero- 
gation. 

This  digression  will  have  been  pardonable  if  it 
has  served  to  make  impossible  to  our  minds  the 
idea  that  to  wear  Wolsey's  cloak  is  to  give  a  true 
performance  of  Wolsey,  or  even  to  assist  in  any 
degree  to  that  end  ;  or  that  to  transfer  Piccadilly 
Circus  bodily  into  the  theatre,  however  remarkable 
the  endeavour,  has  anything  whatever  to  do  with 
dramatic  reality.  In  that  drama  whose  end,  as 
Sir  Arthur  Pinero  has  affirmed  once  or  twice  and  as 
Mr.  Henry  Arthur  Jones  has  never  tired  of  affirm- 
ing, is  to  picture  life,  our  only  demand  is  that  there 
shall  be  no  diminution  in  the  sense  of  reality.  That 
we  do  demand  this,  those  who  have  welcomed  a 
movement  towards  greater  realism  in  the  English 
theatre  not  more  than  those  who  have  fancied 
idly  that  it  has  connoted  something  only  "  sordid 
and  depressing,"  is  every  day  evident.  Some  well- 
intentioned  play,  one  of  the  queer  fish  cast  up  into 
publicity  out  of  the  great  ocean  of  the  deservedly 

63 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

unacted,  will  show  us  the  boudoir  of  a  Duchess, 
with  her  dressing-table  at  one  end,  or  perhaps  her 
bed,  the  safe  in  which  she  keeps  her  priceless 
necklace  of  black  pearls  at  the  other,  and  at  the 
back  a  table  at  which  her  guests  refresh  themselves. 
May  not  the  dramatist  point  to  the  convenience  of 
his  scheme,  and  remind  us  of  the  "  most  outrageous 
convention  "  which  meets  the  realist  on  the  very 
threshold  of  the  theatre  ?  And  yet,  one  and  all  of 
us,  we  refuse  his  story  our  belief  ;  and  why,  unless 
it  is  the  diminution  in  reality  that  is  the  offence  ? 
When  we  look  at  Pieter  Saenredam's  picture  of  the 
Church  of  St.  Bavon  as  it  hangs  on  the  wall  of  the 
gallery,  we  shall  not  mistake  it  for  a  real  church 
in  Haarlem — it  would  be  time  for  the  curator  to 
take  us  in  charge  if  we  did.  But  we  are  delighted 
because  we  are  conscious  that  there  has  not  been 
any  diminution  in  the  sense  of  reality  ;  while  the 
artist  has  added,  what  Pater  has  said  the  best  of 
the  Dutch  genre  painters  always  added,  "  a  more 
and  more  purged  and  perfected  delightfulness  of 
interest."  That  we  shall  have  Mr.  Jones  with  us 
when  we  say  that  this  is  a  task  of  great  difficulty, 
we  know  ;  because  we  have  heard  him  say  that 
already.  "  For  the  purposes  of  the  stage,  human 
lives  have  to  be  woven  into  a  consecutive  story, 
and  this  story  has  to  be  chopped  into  three  or 
four  acts  of  an  average  three-quarters  of  an  hour 
each."  But  art  is  difficult ;  and  why,  alone  of  the 
arts,  should  the  drama  refuse  the  difficult  ?  Cer- 
64 


HENRY  ARTHUR  JONES 

tainly  the  drama,  over  and  over  again,  has  achieved 
the  difficult,  from  the  "  Antigone  "  to  "  Rosmers- 
holm  "  ;  why  should  Mr.  Henry  Arthur  Jones,  who 
saw  that  what  was  wrong  with  the  English  theatre 
was  its  inability  to  remember  the  days  when  it  was 
an  art,  have  stopped  at  the  difficult  and  put  us  off 
with  big  words  ?  It  is  true  that  the  most  stupen- 
dous difficulty,  the  most  outrageous  convention 
meet  the  artist  on  the  very  threshold  of  the  theatre  ; 
but  the  difficulty  and  convention  to  be  met  on  the 
threshold  of  the  theatre  are  no  different  in  kind, 
however  they  may  differ  in  degree,  from  the 
difficulty  and  the  convention  to  be  met  on  the 
threshold  of  any  other  of  the  arts.  We  may  know 
the  artist  by  his  ability  to  overcome  the  difficulty 
and  to  shape  the  convention  to  the  service  of  his 
vision  of  life.  We  may  know  him  in  no  other  way. 
It  is  because  the  English  theatre  had  not  shown 
itself  able,  or  even  anxious,  to  do  this  for  a  century 
that  we  know  there  were  no  artists  in  it ;  only 
practical  dramatists,  crying  out  about  the  diffi- 
culties of  the  theatre,  and  content  to  perform  the 
different  function  of  keeping  it  open. 

No,  the  mistake  of  Mr.  Henry  Arthur  Jones  was 
that  he  thought  it  would  be  a  very  easy  business 
to  invent  character  and  dialogue  that  would  be 
"  good  enough "  ;  that  would  be  sufficiently 
lifelike,  that  is  to  say,  to  give  us  the  pleasure  that 
might  fairly  be  demanded  from  the  theatre.  Or 
perhaps  his  mistake  was  in  thinking  that  because 

E  65 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

in  his  generation  reality  was  not  expected  in  the 
theatre  the  last  way  to  write  plays  that  would  be 
successful  was  to  bother  about  it.  Or  perhaps, 
again,  he  never  thought  very  clearly  upon  the 
subject  of  dramatic  reality  at  all.  Mr.  Jones's 
first  approach  to  the  theatre  was  by  means  of  the 
little  pieces  that  all  the  other  clever  fellows  were 
writing.  One  of  the  first  of  these  was  called 
Harmony,  and  was  about  an  old  blind  organist 
who  drank  and  a  young  organist  who  got  his  job 
and  fell  in  love  with  his  daughter.  The  despair 
of  the  old  blind  organist  was  only  relieved  by 
the  humours  of  a  comic  bailiff's  man  in  possession. 
Enter  the  young  organist,  who  tells  us  in  an  aside 
that  the  old  blind  organist  is  still  to  be  organist, 
with  himself  as  assistant  organist;  whereupon  the  old 
blind  organist  is  so  much  moved  by  his  daughter's 
invoking  her  mother's  memory  that  he  dashes  his 
glass  to  the  ground  and  gives  up  the  drink  for 
ever.  Let  us  complete  the  picture  of  life  with  a 
fragment  of  speech  from  the  bailiff's  man  :  "  It's 
a  very  pretty  instrument,"  he  says,  "  a  jews'  'arp 
is  ;  the  wolume  of  sound  aint  so  overpowering  as  a 
horgin."  It  is  permissible  to  ask  whether  the 
dramatist  with  his  own  ear  had  ever  heard  that 
intrusive  "  w  "  since  he  laid  down  the  works  of 
Dickens.  If  not,  the  young  Mr.  Jones  was  already 
making  too  much  of  the  inviolability  of  convention. 
"  After  I  had  obtained  a  great  financial  success  in 
melodrama,  and  was  temporarily  in  a  position  to 
66 


HENRY  ARTHUR  JONES 

write  a  play  to  please  myself  rather  than  to  suit 

the  exigencies  of  a  theatrical  manager "  Ah, 

what  did  Mr.  Jones  do  then  ?  He  wrote  Saints  and 
Sinners.  Saints  and  Sinners  is  the  story  of  a 
Nonconformist  minister  of  religion  whose  daughter 
is  seduced  by  a  wicked  captain  in  the  Army,  who 
takes  her  to  his  villa  to  live  with  him.  To  him  she 
says,  "  Eustace,  Eustace,  if  you  do  not  mean  to 
make  me  your  wife,  in  mercy  say  so,  and  kill  me  !  " 
To  herself,  in  soliloquy,  she  says,  "  Oh,  I  have 
passed  the  boundaries,  stepped  over  the  eternal 
landmarks  !  Yes,  you  are  sure  of  me  !  and  I  shall 
grow  to  be  as  wicked  as  you  are  !  Yes,  as  wicked," 
&c.  To  her  father,  who  comes  to  the  villa  in  search 
of  her,  she  says,  "  Oh,  don't  touch  me  !  Don't 
speak  to  me  !  Do  you  know  what  I  am  ?  Leave 
me  ;  I'm  not  fit  you  should  touch  me."  Neverthe- 
less she  goes  home  with  him,  and  is  taken  to  church 
by  her  father,  but  the  tradesmen  of  his  congregation, 
or  perhaps  it  is  the  tradesmen's  wives,  will  have 
nothing  more  to  do  with  a  minister  whose  daughter 
has  been  disgraced ;  and  father  and  daughter 
together  pass  into  poverty  and  retirement.  Here, 
attended  by  her  father  and  her  faithful  early  lover 
George,  Letty  nurses  the  sick  and  dies  remarking, 
"  Oh,  you  Christians,  will  you  never  learn  to 
forgive  ?  "  "  But  " — alas  for  Mr.  Jones's  new-found 
determination  to  please  himself  ! — "  the  death- 
scene  proving  too  sad  for  the  genial  associations 
of  the  theatre  where  it  was  to  be  performed,  I 

67 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

accepted  a  kind  suggestion  from  a  well-known 
critic,  and  changed  the  last  scene  into  a  happy  union 
between  Letty  and  George." 

For  the  diminished  reality  of  his  story  in  the 
theatre,  which,  even  so,  he  claimed  to  be  "  a  study 
and  representation  of  life,"  Mr.  Jones  had  two 
excuses  to  put  forward  when  he  came,  seven  years 
later,  when  the  passing  of  the  Anglo-American 
Copyright  Act  made  publication  a  possible  course 
for  practical  dramatists,  to  write  a  preface  to  his 
play.  First,  the  faithfulness  of  his  play  as  a 
representation  of  life  had,  he  pointed  out,  to  be 
made  subject  to  a  due  regard  for  the  requirements 
of  the  modern  stage  ;  second,  such  life  is  after  all 
rather  commonplace  and  uninteresting.  "I  do 
not  claim  any  great  merit  for  Saints  and  Sinners,'^ 
he  wrote,  "  apart  from  that  of  representing  with 
some  degree  of  faithfulness,  and  with  due  regard 
to  the  requirements  of  the  modern  stage,  some 
very  widely  spread  types  of  modern  middle-class 
Englishmen.  If  it  be  objected  that  they  are 
rather  commonplace  and  uninteresting,  I  can  only 
urge  in  defence  that  it  is  impossible  to  suppose 
that  God  Himself  can  have  taken  any  great  degree 
of  pride  in  creating  four-fifths  of  the  present 
inhabitants  of  the  British  Islands,  and  can  hardly 
be  imagined  as  contemplating  His  Image  in  the 
person  of  the  average  British  tradesman  without  a 
suspicion  that  the  mould  is  getting  a  little  out  of 
shape."  So  Mr.  Henry  Arthur  Jones  determined 
68 


HENRY  ARTHUR  JONES 

to  strengthen  the  hand  of  God  by  smiting  the 
Philistines  and  going  in  for  Beauty,  Mystery, 
Passion,  and  Imagination. 

He  gave  us  Judah.  The  Rev.  Judah  Llewellyn 
was  again  a  Nonconformist  minister  of  religion, 
but  this  time  young,  mysterious,  and  passionate,  a 
sort  of  revivalist,  "part  Jewish  and  part  Celtic  " — 
as  his  name  may  serve  to  suggest.  Equally  young, 
passionate,  and  mysterious  is  Vashti,  the  young 
lady  who  goes  about  the  country  performing 
miracles  of  faith- healing.  Now  these  two  meet 
at  the  house  of  an  Earl,  who  has  an  only  daughter 
who  is  dying  :  "  Fifty  thousand  a  year,  and  one 
dying  child  !  "  as  he  is  neatly  summed  up  for  us 
in  an  "  aside."  The  young  lady  is  to  perform 
a  faith- cure,  and  when  the  Earl  promises  her,  if 
she  is  successful,  anything  she  cares  to  ask  for  up 
to  half  his  fortune,  the  young  lady  brings  the 
Earl  "  down  stage  "  and  says  she  would  like  him 
to  build  a  church  for  Judah.  Then  the  faith-cure 
commences.  Now  you  must  know  that  Vashti's 
father  is  nothing  but  a  common  fraud,  who  has  his 
daughter  in  his  power.  For  the  purposes  of  her 
miracle-working,  he  gives  out  that  Vashti  is  living 
entirely  without  food  ;  but  in  reality  he  is  con- 
veying it  to  her  secretly  every  night.  A  Pro- 
fessor who  is  also  staying  with  the  Earl  has  his 
suspicions,  and  he  keeps  so  close  a  watch  upon  the 
movements  of  the  pair  that  Vashti  really  comes 
very   near  starvation.     All  this  time,    you   must 

69 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

understand,  Judah  believes  in  her  implicitly  and 
loves  her  with  pure  passion.  It  is  a  terrible 
moment  for  him,  and  the  great  scene  of  the  play, 
when  he  stays  up  one  night,  as  well  as  all  the  other 
persons,  serious  and  comic,  and  learns  beyond  the 
shadow  of  a  doubt  that  his  Vashti,  like  souls  of 
common  clay,  can  be  hungry.  The  revivalist  has 
a  little  soliloquy  all  to  himself  : 

I  cannot  think.  Good  is  evil,  day  is  night.  Are  you 
angel  or  devil — or  both  ?  What  are  you  ?  The  brightest 
star  of  all  hell,  the  blackest  fiend  of  all  heaven  ?  What 
are  you  ?     Oh,  if  I  had  died  before  I  knew  ! 

But  Vashti  is  an  angel,  despite  the  fact  that  she 
lives  by  food  ;  it  is  her  father  who  is  a  devil,  and 
he  is  properly  discredited  and  sent  packing.  The 
Earl's  daughter  gets  better.  Whereupon  the  Earl 
awards  Vashti  the  church  for  Judah.  But  Judah, 
knowing  what  he  knows,  cannot  accept  the  church. 
"  No,  Lady  Eve  ;  there  was  a  mistake  in  the  title- 
deeds.  The  building  stones  were  not  sound.  Yes, 
we  will  build  our  new  church  with  our  lives,  and  its 
foundation  shall  be  the  truth."  Did  not  Ibsen 
end  a  play  in  somewhat  the  same  manner  ? 

But  Mr.  Henry  Arthur  Jones,  notwithstanding 
his  adventure  with  "A  Doll's  House,"  did  not  like 
Ibsen  any  more  than  did  Sir  Arthur  Pinero.  One 
of  his  next  plays  was  a  play  in  verse  about  the 
Devil,  and  its  prologue  contained  these  words  : 

Shun  the  crude  present  with  vain  problems  rife, 
Nor  join  the  bleak  Norwegian's  barren  quest 
70 


HENRY  ARTHUR  JONES 

For  deathless  beauty's  self  and  holy  zest 
Of  rapturous  martyrdom  in  some  base  strife 
Of  petty  dullards,  soused  in  native  filth.  .  .  . 

"  Petty  dullards,  soused  in  native  filth " — that 
is  Mr.  Jones's  word  for  the  reahstic  drama.  The 
Tempter,  however,  remains  Mr.  Jones's  only  play 
in  verse.  He  obtained  a  great  financial  success 
with  The  Dancing  Girl ;  he  smote  the  Philistines 
in  several  plays  ;  and  then  he  sought  deathless 
beauty's  self  with  Michael  and  His  Lost  Angel. 

Michael  and  His  Lost  Angel  is  the  story  of  another 
minister  of  religion  (Mr.  Jones's  drama,  like  the 
bleak  Norwegian's,  is  rich  in  ministers  of  religion), 
this  time  a  clergyman  of  the  Church  of  England. 
The  clergyman  takes  a  serious  view  of  sexual 
sin,  and  in  the  first  act  returns  from  a  ceremony 
in  which  a  young  girl,  who  has  been  led  astray, 
has  made  full  confession  of  her  fault,  on  his 
advice,  in  open  congregation.  Now  the  clergy- 
man is  in  the  habit  of  retiring  during  the  week 
to  the  seclusion  of  an  island  which  lies  a  few 
miles  off  the  coast  of  his  parish  ;  and  in  this  parish 
has  come  to  live  a  beautiful  lady.  In  the  first 
act  it  is  evident  that  the  beautiful  lady  already 
has  some  influence  over  the  clergyman,  and  he 
blames  himself  for  allowing  her  to  kiss  the  portrait 
of  his  mother,  which  is  his  good  angel,  and  hangs 
always  on  the  wall  above  his  head.  He  sets 
out  for  his  island.  In  the  second  act  we  see  him 
there,  and  to  him  comes  the  beautiful  lady.     He 

71 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

reproaches  her,  the  evening  wears  on,  the  arrange- 
ments she  has  made  for  her  return  are  found  to  be 
defective.  The  curtain  to  this  act  falls  on  the 
words,  "  No  boat  will  come  to-night !  No  boat 
will  come  to-night !  "  In  the  third  act  he  is  back 
on  the  mainland,  rumour  has  been  busy,  and  the 
father  of  the  seduced  young  girl  is  telling  the 
clergyman  to  mete  out  to  himself  the  same  measure 
he  meted  out  to  others.  In  the  church  built  for 
him  with  the  beautiful  lady's  money  he  comes 
face  to  face  with  her  again.  "  The  image  of  my 
sin  is  a  reptile,"  he  says,  "  a  greyish  green  reptile, 
with  spikes,  and  cold  eyes  without  lids."  He 
confesses  his  sin  to  his  people  in  open  congrega- 
tion, and  retires  to  a  monastery  in  Italy.  Thither 
comes  the  beautiful  lady,  when  some  years  have 
elapsed,  and  dies  in  his  arms.  The  clergyman, 
beneath  the  portrait  of  his  mother,  the  good  angel 
he  has  lost,  goes  on  living  to  expiate  his  sin. 

The  play  was,  said  Mr.  Joseph  Knight,  "  in  the 
full  sense  a  masterpiece,"  and  certainly  it  is  diffi- 
cult to  see  why  it  should  have  failed  to  succeed 
in  the  theatre  for  which  it  was  written.  We  are 
told  that  the  impression  got  abroad  that  there 
was  "  something  immoral  in  the  part  of  Audrey 
Lesden  "  ;  but  then,  there  was  something  immoral 
in  the  part  of  Paula  Tanqueray,  and  that  did  not 
keep  people  away.  It  is  possible  to  contemplate 
Michael  and  His  Lost  Angel  being  given  to  the 
world  again,  as  it  is  hardly  possible  to  contemplate 
72 


HENRY  ARTHUR  JONES 

Judah.  The  parallel  instances  of  the  young  girl's 
sin  and  that  of  the  clergyman  point  forward  to 
Mr.  Galsworthy's  drama.  It  may  be  remarked 
that  the  degree  of  faithfulness  Mr.  Jones  permitted 
himself  in  his  representation  of  life  had  still  a 
due  regard  for  the  requirements  of  the  modern 
stage.  When  it  is  necessary  that  we  should  learn 
about  his  heroine,  we  do  so  in  this  way  :  "  What  do 
you  know  of  her  ? — Merely  what  I  wrote  you  in  my 
letter.  That  she  was,  etc.  etc.  etc.  Her  great- 
grandfather,   I    believe,    was "    and    so    on. 

W^hen  the  third  act  opens,  and  we  do  not  know 
what  happened  on  the  island,  "  Let  us  go  carefully 
through  it  all  as  it  happened,  to  make  sure,"  say 
the  guilty  pair,  and  they  do  so,  and  greatly  oblige  us. 
But  if  we  wish  to  see  the  height  of  Mr.  Henry 
Arthur  Jones's  achievement  in  the  kind  of  play 
that  is  a  study  and  representation  of  life,  we  pass 
on  to  Mrs.  Dane's  Defence.  Mrs.  Dane's  Defence 
is  the  story  of  the  struggle  of  a  young  woman, 
who  has  been  unfortunate,  to  keep  her  place  in 
suburban  society.  Having  been  mixed  up  in  an 
ugly  Continental  scandal,  she  comes  back  to 
England  and  pretends  to  be  some  one  else.  In 
her  capacity  as  some  one  else,  she  becomes  engaged 
to  marry  the  adopted  son  of  a  judge.  But  she  has 
to  cope  with  the  judge.  In  the  great  scene  of  the 
play  the  judge  cross-examines  her  in  the  privacy 
of  his  suburban  library  upon  the  story  of  her  life. 
We  watch   him  out-matching   her — out-matching 

73 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

her  at  every  point.  The  question  comes,  "  When 
was  the  last  time  you  saw  your  cousin  Felicia 
Hindemarsh  ?  "  ;  then,  "  Woman,  you're  lying  ! 
.  .  .  You  are  Felicia  Hindemarsh."  Our  sym- 
pathy is  carefully  retained  for  Mrs.  Dane  ;  she  is 
not  a  bad  woman,  nobody  warned  her,  she  never 
had  a  chance.  In  the  end,  while  she  is  not  allowed 
to  marry  the  judge's  son,  she  is  allowed  to  keep  her 
place  in  suburban  society  ;  the  judge's  son  falls 
back  upon  a  young  girl  who  has  loved  him  all  the 
time,  and  her  aunt  makes  every  one  happy  by 
consenting  to  marry  the  judge.  The  first  thing 
that  strikes  the  contemporary  playgoer  when  he 
is  faced  with  Mrs.  Dane's  Defence  is  that  here  is 
a  play  which  ought  to  exist  for  the  sake  of  a  woman 
who  lied  because  of  her  deep  love,  but  which  exists 
in  fact  for  the  sake  of  a  high-handed,  if  sympathetic 
judge. 

It  is  the  Trail  of  the  Actor-Manager  that  we  have 
come  upon.  The  dramatist  blazed  this  trail  with 
The  Silver  King,  and  he  has  never  ceased  to  follow 
it.  We  understand  now  what  Mr.  Jones  meant 
by  a  due  regard  for  the  requirements  of  the  modern 
stage.  The  "  requirements  of  the  modern  stage  " 
are  the  Actor-Manager's  requirements.  The  Actor- 
Manager's  requirements  are,  stated  shortly,  that 
he  shall  be  "a  bright,  shrewd  man  of  the  world, 
about  fifty  "  with  a  third  act  in  which  to  decide 
the  destinies  of  several  persons,  a  fourth  act  in 
which  to  lay  siege  successfully  to  a  younger  heart 
74 


HENRY  ARTHUR  JONES 

that  has  long  held  out  against  him — although 
how  it  has  succeeded  so  long  in  holding  out  against 
his  masterful  charm  remains  a  mystery — and  a 
free  permission  throughout  all  four  acts  to  tell 
the  story  of  his  life,  whenever  it  may  seem  to  him 
to  be  apposite.  It  will  be  found  that  Mrs.  Dane's 
Defence  fulfils  all  these  requirements,  just  as 
satisfactorily  as  do  Mr.  Henry  Arthur  Jones's 
principal  comedies,  with  which  we  shall  have  to 
deal  in  a  moment.  The  Actor-Manager,  we  are  at 
liberty  to  suppose,  was  that  "  most  outrageous 
convention,"  which,  it  will  be  remembered,  met  the 
realist  on  the  very  threshold  of  the  theatre.  For 
the  purposes  of  the  Actor-Manager  human  lives 
have  to  be  woven  into  a  consecutive  story,  and  this 
story  has  to  be  chopped  into  three  or  four  acts  of 
an  average  three-quarters  of  an  hour  each,  because 
that  is  the  length  the  Actor-Manager  likes  best. 

In  the  fact  that  Mr.  Jones  writes  Speeches  for 
Actor-Managers  we  have  the  key  to  his  dramatic 
diction,  whether  comic  or  serious.  This  is  from  the 
serious  play  we  have  just  been  regarding : 

Sir  Daniel.  When  I  came  up  to  London  to  read  for 
the  Bar,  I  fell  very  desperately  in  love  with  my  landlady's 
sister,  a  lady  some  six  years  older  and  some  two  stone 
heavier  than  myself.  She  was  in  the  mantle  business,  and 
wore  a  large  crinoline.  I  used  to  call  her  my  Bonnie  Louisa. 
My  father  got  wind  of  it,  came  up  to  town  and  promptly 
shattered  our  apple-cart  ;  sent  Bonnie  Louisa  flying  to 
Paris,  and  packed  me  off  on  a  judicial  commission  to 
India. 

75 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

Lal.     I  don't  see  the  point  of  the  story,  sir. 

Sir  Daniel.  Twelve  years  after,  I  happened  to  be 
coming  down  the  Edgware  Road  on  a  Sunday  morning, 
and  I  met  Bonnie  Louisa  with  a  husband  and  five  children, 
all  in  their  Sunday  best. 

Lal.     Still  I  don't  see  the  point,  sir. 

Sir  Daniel.  I  did  !  I  hurried  to  church  and  devoutly 
thanked  Heaven  that  my  father  had  had  the  sense  and  the 
courage  to  do  for  me  what  I'm  trying  to  do  for  you  to-night. 
[Very  firmly.]  Now,  my  boy,  you'll  take  this  post  under 
Sir  Robert  Jennings. 

That  is  the  Actor-Manager  in  the  act  of  managing. 
It  is  true  that  the  point  of  his  story  (which  we 
cannot  blame  Lionel  for  not  seeing)  in  real  life 
would  be  grossly  insulting  to  the  lady  his  son  is 
in  love  with,  but  we  need  not  mind  about  that — 
it  gets  its  effect  in  Mr,  Jones's  theatre,  where  no 
one  minds  about  real  life,  but  only  about  Beauty, 
Mystery,  Passion,  and  Imagination.  And  now  for 
the  Actor-Manager  in  comedy  : 

Elaine.     There  is  an  immense  future  for  Woman 

Sib.  Hick  ART)  [interrupting].  At  her  own  fireside.  There 
is  an  immense  future  for  women  as  wives  and  mothers,  and 
a  very  limited  future  for  them  in  any  other  capacity. 
While  you  ladies  without  passions — or  with  distorted  and 
defeated  passions — are  raving  and  trumpeting  all  over 
the  country,  that  wise  grim  old  grandmother  of  us  all, 
Dame  Nature,  is  simply  laughing  up  her  sleeve  and  snapping 
her  fingers  at  you  and  your  new  epochs  and  your  new 
movements.  Go  home  !  Be  sure  that  old  Dame  Nature 
will  choose  her  own  darlings  to  carry  on  her  own  schemes. 
Go  home  !  Go  home  !  Nature's  darling  woman  is  a  stay- 
at-home  woman,  a  woman  who  wants  to  be  a  good  wife 
and  a  good  mother,  and  cares  very  little  for  anything  else. 
76 


HENRY  ARTHUR  JONES 

[Elaine  is  about  to  speak,  Sik  Richard  silences  her  xjcith  a 
gesture.]  Go  home  !  Go  home,  and  don't  worry  the  world 
any  longer  about  this  tiresome  sexual  business,  for,  take 
my  word,  it  was  settled  once  for  all  in  the  Garden  of  Eden, 
and  there's  no  more  to  be  said  about  it.  Go  home  !  Go 
home  I     Go  home  ! 

Elaine  \Jurious\.    Sir  Richard,  you  are  grossly  indelicate ! 

Sir  Richard  \hlandly].  I  am.  So's  Nature.  [Cheer- 
fully.]    Now  I  must  go  and  dress  for  dinner. 

Cannot  you  hear  the  rising  inflexions  of  the  voice, 
so  familiar  and  so  lovable  ?  What  chance  for 
Susan  to  remain  Rebellious,  with  such  a  manager 
among  uncles  about  the  house  ?  It  is  a  delightful 
world,  this  in  which  the  Actor-Manager  lives. 
There  is  provision  for  applause  as  he  enters  it : 
"  Oh,  nonsense,  Nepean  ;  you're  mistaken  " — (his 
first  sentence  must  be  just  long  enough  for  him  to 
get  it  out  before  the  applause  breaks  in.)  Once 
on  the  stage,  he  moves  through  this  world,  blandly 
interrupting  people  with  his  wisdom  of  it,  cheerfully 
moving  off  to  dress  for  dinner  when  they  offer  to 
reply.  The  condition  of  their  existence  around 
him  is  that  they  serve  him  with  easy  dialectic  lobs 
that  he  may  smite  to  the  boundary.  "  Ah,  pardon 
my  inexperience,"  he  says,  and  they  feel  properly 
crushed.  His  habitual  tone,  whether  he  be  the 
distinguished  Q.C.,  the  well-known  judge,  or  merely 
the  famous  soldier,  is  "  the  tone  of  a  skilful  cross- 
examiner  who  is  leading  his  witness  unsuspectingly 
on. "  He  manages  them  not  only  by  moral  suasion, 
but   by  physical  force  as   well ;     "  driving  them 

77 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

nearer  to  each  other,"  or  heading  off  a  recalcitrant 
wife  down  stage.  When  the  moment  comes  he 
illustrates  the  action  with  a  chapter  from  the  story 
of  his  life.  "  I've  had  one  great  love  story  in  my 
life,"  he  says.  "  Shall  I  tell  you  about  it  ?  "  To 
the  foolish  young,  "  I've  been  twenty-five  "  is  his 
all-sufficient  answer.  "  I'm  not  a  hero,"  he  says  ; 
"  I'm  not  on  a  pedestal,  I  never  put  on  a  moral 
toga.  But  I  owe  no  woman  a  sigh  or  a  sixpence. 
I've  never  wronged  any  man's  sister,  or  daughter,  or 
wife."  He  has  had,  of  course,  his  "  little  amours  "  ; 
would  he  be  the  man  he  is,  able  to  manage  every- 
body's business,  if  he  had  not  ?  "I  became 
successful,  and  met  other  women,  had  my  affairs 
with  them — I  won't  call  them  love-affairs — some 
of  them  graceful,  some  of  them  romantic,  none  of 
them  quite  degrading  ..."  Even  the  Devil,  in 
Mr.  Jones's  poetical  play,  has  the  principles  of 
the  Actor-Manager  : 

It  isn't  fair  to  tell  against  a  woman. 

You've  had  your  frolic  ;  now  be  wise.     Forget  her. 

Out  of  the  Actor-Manager's  youthful  frolics  has 
come  the  wisdom  he  is  able  to  impart  to  other 
men  :  "  That's  all  right.  Love  'em,  worship  'em, 
make  the  most  of  'em  !  Go  down  on  your  knees 
every  day  and  thank  God  for  having  sent  them  into 
this  dreary  world  for  our  good  and  comfort.  But, 
don't  break  your  heart  over  'em  !  Don't  ruin  your 
career  for  'em  !  Don't  lose  a  night's  rest  for  'em  ! 
78 


HENRY  ARTHUR  JONES 

They're  not  worth  it  [very  softly] — except  one  !  " 
It  is  a  delightful  world  for  Actor-Managers.  "  Go 
home  !  "  he  has  but  to  say,  for  Lady  Susan  to  go 
back  to  her  husband,  for  Lady  Jessica  to  go  back 
to  her  husband,  for  Mrs.  Dane  to  go  out  into  the 
night  and  to  her  child.  And  when  lovers  are 
finished  parting,  because  he  tells  them  to,  he  turns 
and  secures  his  own  loved  One  in  the  end. 

This  "  outrageous  convention  "  of  the  Actor- 
Manager  was  good  enough  to  produce  Mrs.  Dane's 
Defence  on  the  one  hand  ;  it  was  good  enough  to 
produce  The  Liars  on  the  other.  The  Liars 
remains  the  most  representative  artificial  comedy 
of  its  generation,  and  the  masterpiece  of  Mr. 
Henry  Arthur  Jones.  It  shows  at  their  best  its 
author's  powers  of  pleasant  play  construction,  less 
stiffly  formal  than  Pinero's ;  it  exhibits  some 
understanding  of  comic  diction  as  existing  apart 
from  Oscar  Wilde.  We  are  bound  to  find  Wilde's 
influence  on  his  elder  contemporary  in  the  theatre 
marked  very  clearly,  but  Mrs.  Dane's  Defence  owes 
more  to  the  author  of  "  Lady  Windermere's  Fan  " 
than  The  Liars  owes  to  the  author  of  "  The 
Importance  of  Being  Earnest."  The  Canon  and 
the  Bulsom-Porters,  as  constituent  figures  in  the 
play  about  the  woman  who  was  not  a  bad  woman, 
have  moments,  even  in  their  diction,  which  bring  to 
mind  the  dramatist  who,  for  a  little  interlude  in  his 
own  work  as  artist,  joined  in  the  game  of  keeping 
the  theatres  open.     But  The  Liars  is  quite  definitely 

79 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

Mr.  Henry  Arthur  Jones's  own.  We  may  see  its 
author's  powers  of  comic  diction,  more  particularly 
in  an  effective  use  of  verbal  repetition.  "  Give  me 
a  woman  that  lets  a  man  call  his  soul  his  own," 
says  Freddie  Tatton.  "  That's  all  I  want,  Coke,  to 
call  my  soul  my  own."  When  Lady  Jessica  has  run 
her  risk,  the  dreadful  Risk  of  Becoming  Declassee, 
her  reiterated  story  is  quite  funny,  "  I  must  have 
taken  the  wrong  turning,  for  instead  of  finding 
myself  at  the  station  I  found  myself  at  the  '  Star 
and  Garter.'  "  Dolly,  who  is  to  say  that  she  too 
dined  there,  is  quite  willing  to  stick  to  it,  "  Only 
I  should  like  to  know  where  I  dined.  Where  did 
I  dine  ?  "  In  other  ways,  too,  Mr.  Jones  comes 
near  to  wit.  "  I  will  be  a  cipher  no  longer,"  says 
Freddie,  to  which  his  wife  replies,  "  Run  away  to 
your  club,  Freddie,  and  think  over  what  figure  you 
would  like  to  be.  I  dare  say  we  can  arrange  it." 
"  Your  Freddie  is  such  a  poor  little  pocket- 
edition  of  a  man,"  says  Lady  Jessica ;  while 
Sir  Christopher's  word  for  the  amusing  third-act 
imbroglio  is  the  right  one,  "  We're  taking  too  many 
partners  into  this  concern."  For  the  rest,  the  play 
is  Sir  Christopher's,  in  the  manner  we  have  seen  ; 
and  as  for  the  indiscretion  of  Lady  Jessica,  it  is 
no  more  than  Lady  Susan's,  "  There  wasn't  even 
so  much  as  an  innocent  flirtation  !  There  wasn't 
indeed !  "  This  earlier  comedy.  The  Case  of 
Rebellious  Susan,  foreshadowed  The  Liars  in  the 
closest  possible  fashion,  sharing  its  form  without 
80 


HENRY  ARTHUR  JONES 

quite  attaining  to  its  distinctness  of  comic  dialogue 
or  imbroglio.  It  is  instructive  to  read  of  Sir 
Richard,  in  his  managing  scene,  that  "  whenever 
the  business  of  the  stage  allows  it,  he  shows  to  the 
audience  that  he  is  most  keenly  watching  every 
word,  movement,  and  glance  "  ;  for  in  the  Play 
for  Actor- Managers,  than  Stage  Business  there  was 
no  more  important  contributory  part. 

Mr.  Henry  Arthur  Jones  has  written  other 
plays,  both  comic  and  serious.  In  some,  like 
The  Manoeuvres  of  Jane,  the  Actor- Manager  was 
provided  with  little  else  than  Stage  Business ; 
he  fell  into  the  sea  and  got  wet,  being  a  comic 
rather  than  a  sympathetic  Actor-Manager.  In 
other  comedies,  in  the  quarrelling  scene  of  Dolly 
Reforming  Herself  in  particular,  there  was  some  of 
the  old  adroitness  of  the  lying  scene  in  The  Liars  ; 
in  The  Ogre,  the  Actor-Manager  nailed  up  the 
breeches  over  the  fireplace,  and  the  familiar 
cadences  about  Woman  had  all  the  old  ring ;  but 
in  his  more  serious  plays,  it  must  be  concluded, 
Mr.  Jones  has  ceased  to  attract.  Since  we  failed 
to  recognize  ourselves  in  The  Hypocrites  he  has 
taken  to  smiting  the  Philistines  in  studies  and 
representations  of  English  life  that  are  consumed 
in  America,  where  perhaps  they  find  them  quite 
satisfying.  Is  it  possible  that  the  English  theatre 
has  passed  on  to  something  with  a  greater  air 
of  vraisemblance  ?  The  dramatist  of  The  Liars 
knew   the   names   of  all   the   wines   and   sauces, 

F  81 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

but  very  little  about  the  heart  of  man.  We 
owe  him  many  pleasing  characters  and  scenes, 
most  of  them  as  essentially  false  as  the  falsities 
and  theatricalities  he  supposed  himself,  like 
Robertson,  to  be  superseding.  "  Wonder  at  nothing 
that  you  find  in  the  heart  of  a  woman,  or  the  heart 
of  a  man,"  we  read  at  the  end  of  Lady  Susan's 
comedy,  "  God  has  put  everything  there."  No, 
it  was  not  the  hand  of  God,  but  the  hand  of  the 
practical  dramatist ;  and  that  is  why  there  is 
nothing  there  to  wonder  at. 


82 


Ill 
OSCAR  WILDE 

MR.  HENRY  ARTHUR  JONES  once  spoke 
of  his  endeavour  as  "  to  bring  some  kind 
of  style  and  form  into  the  art  of  play- 
writing,"  but  it  was  Oscar  Wilde  who  really  did 
this.  Wilde's  importance  to  the  English  drama  is 
that,  at  whatever  cost  in  other  things,  he  made 
clear  the  necessity  of  style.  Characteristically,  in 
giving  the  English  drama  style  again  he  took  care 
to  rob  it  of  sincerity.  "  In  all  the  unimportant 
matters  sincerity,  not  style,"  he  wrote  as  critic,  "  is 
the  essential.  In  all  important  matters,  style,  not 
sincerity,  is  the  essential."  Pleased  with  this,  as 
artist  he  gave  it  to  one  of  the  best  of  the  persons  in 
his  trivial  comedy  to  say  again.  Now  the  greatest 
of  Wilde's  claims  upon  our  gratitude  is  that  to  him 
the  drama  was  a  matter  of  importance.  It  was  a 
matter  of  grave  importance,  not  as  it  is  to  trades- 
men, because  it  serves  to  keep  the  theatres  open, 
but  as  it  is  to  the  artist,  because  it  is  an  opportunity 
for  the  personal  expression  of  something  that  has 

83 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

beauty.  "  The  artist  is  the  creator  of  beautiful 
things  "  were  the  first  words  of  that  credo  which 
Wilde  set  as  a  preface  in  the  forefront  of  his  Dorian 
Gray.  It  is  his  greatest  claim  upon  our  gratitude 
that  when  he  came  to  the  theatre  he  did  not  for- 
get this.  It  will  not  do  to  be  misled  by  the 
fact  that  he  wrote  "  trivially  "  for  it  into  thinking 
that  the  theatre  was  not,  to  Wilde,  an  important 
matter.  To  write  trivially  was  one  of  Wilde's 
poses.  Perhaps  it  was  the  favourite  of  his  poses 
to  be  trivial  about  those  things  which  are  far  too 
important,  as  he  would  say,  ever  to  be  serious 
about. 

We  do  well  to  start  thus  with  an  antithesis,  even 
if  it  be  only  the  well-worn  antithesis  between  style 
and  sincerity.  Of  course  there  is  no  true  antithesis 
between  style  and  sincerity ;  sincerity,  on  the 
contrary,  is  the  greatest  possible  producer  of  good 
style ;  but  Wilde  must  have  his  antithesis.  His 
comedy  is  the  comedy  of  antithesis.  Verbally  (and 
in  writing  of  the  drama  of  Wilde  one  naturally 
writes  of  its  verbal  aspects  first),  verbally  the  joy  in 
a  Wilde  comedy  is  nearly  always  the  sudden  joy  of 
the  antithesis.  "  I  assure  you  that  the  amount 
of  things  I  and  my  poor  dear  sister  were  taught 
not  to  understand  was  quite  extraordinary.  But 
modern  women  understand  everything,  I  am  told." 
This  degenerates  very  simply  into  the  trick  anti- 
thesis, with  its  lesser  joy  or  no  joy  at  all,  of  which 
Wilde's  worser  comedies  are  full ;  the  mere  putting 
84 


OSCAR  WILDE 

of  the  unlikely  word  against  the  likely — "  I  can't 
understand  this  modern  mania  for  curates  ...  I 
think  it  most  irreligious  "  ;  "  Don't  be  led  astray 
into  the  paths  of  virtue,"  and  so  on.  But  what  is 
easily  called  paradox,  and  dismissed,  is  often 
something  quite  true,  to  the  statement  of  which  an 
antithetical  form  has  been,  perhaps  perversely, 
iihparted.  For  example,  we  have  Cecily's  diary, 
which  "  is  simply  a  very  young  girl's  record  of  her 
own  thoughts  and  impressions,  and  consequently 
meant  for  publication."  Conventionally,  we  expect 
the  "  not  "  ;  but  who  would  say,  with  memories 
extending  from  Harriette  Wilson  to  Marie  Bash- 
kirtseff,  and  later,  that  the  unconventional  here  is 
not  the  witty  expression  of  the  truth  ?  We  shall 
often  find  in  Wilde's  work,  at  its  best,  the  truth 
of  the  unconventional ;  the  truth,  if  you  like,  of 
masks.  We  may  note  at  once  that  his  comic 
method  is  frequently  the  Omission  of  the  Expected. 
Wilde's  characteristic  use  of  the  comic  dramatist's 
weapon  of  surprise  is  a  kind  of  amalgam  of  surprise 
plus  recognition,  as  in  the  incident  of  Cecily's  diary. 
And  this  may  fittingly  bring  us  to  character.  By 
W^ilde's  antithetical  method,  a  delicate  flavouring 
of  satire  is  imparted  to  dialogue  that  is  yet  not 
falsified  beyond  recognition  of  its  essential  truth. 
Wilde  cared  far  more  for  speaking  personally 
through  his  people  than  for  giving  them  that  life 
by  which  they  might  speak  for  themselves, 
but  their  speech  is  often  not  untrue  to  character 

85 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

because  character  has   been  so  skilfully  selected 
and  limited. 

The  characters  of  Wilde's  comedies  may  be 
divided  into  those  that  are  plain  and  those  that 
are  coloured  by  their  author's  more  personal  pre- 
dilections. The  coloured  are  more  numerous  than 
the  plain,  and  certainly  more  interesting.  The 
plain  are  the  "  good  women  " — Lady  Windermere, 
Lady  Chiltem,  Mrs.  Arbuthnot,  and  Hester,  the 
American  young  woman ;  these  are  sometimes 
allowed  a  dash  of  verbal  colour  it  takes  all  their 
Puritanism  or  their  interest  in  the  Housing  of  the 
Poor  to  resist,  and  Mrs.  Erlynne,  that  good  woman, 
merges  nearly  into  the  coloured.  There  are  the 
good  men,  of  which  Lord  Windermere  and  Sir 
Robert  Chiltern  are  one  type,  and  Gerald  Arbuth- 
not, the  "  straight "  boy,  is  another.  John 
Worthing  has  to  be  serious  for  the  purposes  of  the 
trivial  comedy,  and  so,  lest  he,  too,  lapse  into  some- 
thing of  his  author's  incurable  zest,  he  is  made  a 
J.  P.  But  the  method  of  antithesis  is  clearly  seen 
to  be  still  at  work  in  the  matter  of  character  when 
we  compare  Jack  even  for  a  moment  with  the 
trivial  Algernon  who  is  set  down  beside  him. 
Algernon  Moncrieff,  the  Bunburyist,  is  the  type 
of  which  Viscount  Goring,  Lord  Darlington,  Lord 
Illingworth,  younger  or  older,  more  amusing  or 
less  amusing,  are  but  variations.  These  are  the 
coloured  persons,  who  shine  with  the  reflected  glow 
of  the  gossamer  good  things  it  delighted  Wilde  to 
86 


OSCAR  WILDE 

let  fly  from  their  mouths — his  own  good  things, 
■ve  are  certain,  more  often  than  not.  Other 
persons,  coloured  still  with  his  own  idiosyncrasy, 
hut  adversely  as  it  were,  figures  of  satire,  are 
luppy,  the  most  good-natured  man  in  London ; 
ths  young  fools — Cecil  Graham,  who  likes  people 
to  ask  him  how  he  is,  and  Dumby,  who  has  been 
wildly,  madly  adored ;  the  old  fools — the  Earl  of 
Caversham,  Canon  Chasuble,  and  the  Archdeacon. 
There  are  the  discreetly  uncommunicative  men- 
servants,  one  of  whom  surprises  Goring  and  us  by 
his  "  clever  talk  "  into  a  sudden  memory  of  the 
Duciiess  of  Berwick's  little  chatterbox.  This 
brings  us  to  the  women,  and  we  may  well  begin 
with  the  young  ones. 

"  The  most  wonderful  thing  in  the  world — 
youth  1  There  is  nothing  like  youth,"  says 
Lord  Illingworth.  It  is  impossible  to  deny  to 
Wilde's  comedies  a  sincere  zest  in  youth.  His 
triumphant  young  girls,  talking  glibly,  are  its 
embodiment.  "  How  a  little  love  and  good  com- 
pany improves  a  woman  !  "  says  Mrs.  Sullen  in 
the  old  comedy  ;  and  we  think  of  the  words  in 
regard  to  Wilde's  Cecily  Cardew,  for  the  first  time 
in  the  theatre  since  Lady  Teazle.  Over  against 
Cecily  with  her  watering-can  is  set  Gwendolen  and 
her  lorgnette,  with  great  art ;  both  are  delightfully 
youthful,  although  Gwendolen  is  as  obviously 
suited  to  the  serious  Jack  as  Cecily  is  to  the  trivial 
Algernon,    since   it   is   likeness   that    satisfies,    as 

87 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

Mr.  John  Stuart  Mill  has  informed  us,  however 
unlikeness  may  attract.  Wilde's  zest  in  youth 
overflows  into  his  stage  directions  :  "  enter  Mabel 
Chiltern  in  the  most  ravishing  frock."  It  is  a 
particularly  jolly  way  he  has  of  poking  fun  *t 
himself  ifl  his  stage  directions  ;  after  Lady  Basildon 
has  entered  and  reminded  him  of  an  idyll  by 
Watteau,  after  Lord  Caversham  has  entered  and 
proved  to  be  like  a  portrait  by  Lawrence,  after 
Mrs.  Cheveley  has  entered  looking  rather  like  an 
orchid,  Mabel  enters,  and  "  to  sane  people,"  we 
read,  "  she  is  not  reminiscent  of  any  work  of  art." 
She  and  Goring  "  blow  kisses,"  like  Gwendolen  and 
Jack  on  another  occasion.  "  Lady  Bracknel  looks 
vaguely  about  as  if  she  could  not  understand  what 
the  noise  was."  Lady  Bracknel  is  the  type  of  the 
first  of  Mrs.  Allonby's  categories  for  her  elders, 
"  the  dowagers,"  with  the  Duchess  of  Berwick, 
Lady  Hunstanton,  and  Lady  Markby  for  paler 
embodiments  ;  "  the  dowdies  "  are  Lady  Jed- 
burgh, Lady  Caroline  Pontefract,  and  so  on.  The 
contemporaries  of  Mrs.  Allonby,  "  types  of  exquisite 
fragility,"  women  not  quite  young  but  certainly 
not  quite  old,  are  Lady  Plymdale  and  Lady  Stut- 
field,  the  latter  of  whom  goes  through  two  comedies, 
one  graceful  kneel.  "  But  do  you  really  think  a 
man's  chin  can  be  too  square  ?  I  think  a  man 
should  look  very,  very  strong,  and  that  his  chin 
should  be  quite,  quite  square."  Impossible  to 
deny  to  Lady  Stutfield  (though  her  too-too  style 
88 


OSCAR  WILDE 

is  the  very  most  personal  thing,  reading  rather  Uke 
a  good-natured  parody  of  Wilde's  own)  a  general 
truth  to  the  little  parcel  of  brilliantly  observed 
traits  that  make  up  her  character.  She  is  as  true 
to  character,  and  as  true  to  her  creator,  as  Lady 
Bracknel  is  when  she  speaks  about  Land. 

In  Wilde's  comic  dialogue,  inconsequence  plays 
as  large  a  part  as  the  antithetical  quality  we  have 
noted.  Indeed,  the  one  comes  in  with  the  other  ;  the 
inconsequence  is  a  kind  of  antithesis  so  amusingly 
strained  as  to  give  rise  to  the  pleasure  of  surprise. 
Antithesis  serves  its  purpose  to  tell  the  plain  truth  ; 
for  example,  "  Only  dull  people  are  brilliant  at 
breakfast."  But  Wilde's  comedies  are  filled  with 
persons  who  are  amiably  incompetent  to  speak 
plainly  the  truth  or  anything  else.  They  them- 
selves are  set  over  against  the  clever  people,  the 
people  who  never  mean  a  single  word  they  say. 
"  My  dear,"  the  former  remark,  "  how  can  you 
say  that  ?  There  is  no  resemblance  between  the 
two  things  at  all."  Their  own  way  is  to  put  two 
and  two  together.  They  "  run  on."  A  country 
some  of  whose  States  are  as  big  as  France  and 
England  put  together  suggests  to  Lady  Caroline 
a  country  that  is  very  draughty,  and  a  draught 
suggests  mufflers,  and  mufflers  her  husband,  who 
won't  wear  his.  A  consequence  so  devastating  in 
its  literalness  we  can  only  call  inconsequence. 
Wilde  perfected  this  kind  of  comic  inconsequence. 
There  is  inconsequence  for  its  own  sake  : 

89 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

Lady  Bracknel.  Well,  I  must  say,  Algernon,  that  I 
think  it  is  high  time  Mr.  Bunbury  made  up  his  mind  whether 
he  was  going  to  live  or  to  die.  This  shilly-shallying  with 
the  question  is  absurd.  Nor  do  I  in  any  way  approve  of 
the  modem  sympathy  with  invalids.  I  consider  it  morbid. 
Illness  of  any  kind  is  hardly  a  thing  to  be  encouraged  in 
others.  Health  is  the  primary  duty  of  life.  I  am  always 
telling  that  to  your  poor  uncle,  but  he  never  seems  to  take 
much  notice  ...  as  far  as  any  improvement  in  his  ailments 
goes.  I  should  be  much  obliged  if  you  would  ask  Mr. 
Bunbury,  from  me,  to  be  kind  enough  not  to  have  a  relapse 
on  Saturday,  for  I  rely  on  you  to  arrange  my  music  for 
me.  It  is  my  last  reception,  and  one  wants  something 
that  will  encourage  conversation,  particularly  at  the  end 
of  the  season  when  every  one  has  practically  said  whatever 
they  had  to  say,  which,  in  most  cases,  was  probably  not 
much. 

There  is  inconsequence  elevated  into  a  method  : 

Lord  Goring.  Well,  the  fact  is,  father,  this  is  not  my 
day  for  talking  seriously.  I  am  very  sorry,  but  it  is  not 
my  day. 

Lord  Caversham.    What  do  you  mean,  sir  ? 

Lord  Goring.  During  the  Season,  father,  I  only  talk 
seriously  on  the  first  Tuesday  in  every  month,  from  four 
to  seven. 

Lord  Caversham.  Well,  make  it  Tuesday,  sir,  make  it 
Tuesday. 

Lord  Goring.  But  it  is  after  seven,  father,  and  my 
doctor  says  I  must  not  have  any  serious  conversation  after 
seven.     It  makes  me  talk  in  my  sleep. 

Lord  Caversham.  Talk  in  your  sleep,  sir  ?  What  does 
that  matter  ?    You  are  not  married. 

Lord  Goring.    No,  father,  I  am  not  married. 

Lord  Caversham.     Hum  !    That  is  what  I  have  come 
to  talk  to  you  about,  sir.  .  .  . 
90 


OSCAR  WILDE 

The  twists  and  turns  of  Lady  Bracknel's  diction — 
one  clause  capping  another  only  to  be  capped  again, 
the  whole  giving  the  impression  that  she  speaks 
whatever  comes  into  her  head  without,  however, 
by  some  unlikely  dispensation  of  Providence,  ever 
for  a  moment  losing  her  author's  fine  sense  of 
phrase — are  matched  by  the  twists  and  turns  of 
Wilde's  dramatic  action.  It  is  in  this  that  the 
trick  of  inconsequence  serves  him,  as  a  deliberate 
method  by  which  to  get  back  on  to  the  right  line 
again.  In  a  serious  drama  like  Wilde's,  which  is 
for  the  most  part  valuable  for  its  comic  interpola- 
tions, some  such  method  is  essential.  He  called 
his  novel  "  an  essay  on  decorative  art,"  and  that  is 
a  name  that  might  be  given  to  each  of  the  modern 
plays  in  its  turn. 

For  it  is  not  the  theme  that  we  remember,  it  is  the 
comic  passages  with  which  the  theme  is  decorated. 
There  is  some  effect  of  comic  observation  that  he 
wishes  to  make,  and  he  makes  it ;  he  does  not 
mind  where.  The  reputation  of  a  good  woman,  the 
happiness  of  wife  and  husband,  may  hang  in 
the  balance  ;  we  are  not  to  be  denied  our  comic 
interlude : 

DuMBY.  Good  evening,  Lady  Stutfield.  I  suppose  this 
will  be  the  last  ball  of  the  season  ? 

Lady  Stutfield.  I  suppose  so,  Mr.  Dumby.  It's  been 
a  delightful  season,  hasn't  it  ? 

Dumby.  Quite  delightful  1  Good  evening,  Duchess. 
I  suppose  this  will  be  the  last  ball  of  the  season  ? 

91 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

Duchess  of  Berwick.  I  suppose  so,  Mr.  Dumby.  It 
has  been  a  very  dull  season,    hasn't  it  ? 

Dumby.    Dreadfully  dull  1    Dreadfully  dull  I 

Mrs.  Cowper-Cowpeb.  Gk)od  evening,  Mr.  Dumby. 
I  suppose  this  will  be  the  last  ball  of  the  season  ? 

Dumby.  Oh,  I  think  not.  There'll  probably  be  two 
more. 

A  drama  written  for  the  sake  of  its  interludes  can 
hardly  be  anything  but  inconsequent.  That  is  why 
The  Importance  of  Being  Earnest  is  immeasurably 
the  best  of  these  plays,  because  it  is  all  inconse- 
quence, i  Inconsequence  for  its  own  sake,  incon- 
sequence as  a  method  of  getting  forward,  what 
does  it  matter,  where  everything  in  character  and 
dialogue  has  an  equally  delightful  inconsequence  ? 
A  play  in  which  Algernon  can  eat  all  the  cucumber 
sandwiches  prepared  for  his  aunt,  Lady  Bracknel, 
and  quarrel  with  Jack  because  he  takes  one,  and 
silence  his  obvious  retort  with  "  That  is  quite  a 
different  matter.  She  is  my  aunt,"  and  leave  us 
feeling  that  he  has  spoken  quite  properly,  is  a  play 
that  has  evidently  set  up  its  own  conventions,  and 
achieved  a  quite  perfect  success  within  them.  The 
inconsequence  of  The  Importance  of  Being  Earnest 
is  the  gay  inconsequence  of  youth,  and  its  consis- 
tency is  wonderful.  It  is  something  a  world  apart 
from  the  trick  inconsequence  by  which  the  lady 

*  "  There  Is  no  use  adding  '  place '  and  '  time '  to  the 
scenario,  as  the  unities  are  not  in  the  scheme.  In  art  I 
am  Platonic,  not  Aristotelian — tho'  I  wear  my  Plato 
'  with  a  difference.'  " — Wilde,  Letter  to  a  friend,  December  18, 
1898  (unpublished). 
92 


OSCAR  WILDE 

in  the  would-be  serious  play,  when  she  is  told  that 
there  is  an  orchid  in  her  greenhouse  as  beautiful 
as  the  seven  deadly  sins,  is  made  to  say,  "  My  dear, 
I  hope  there  is  nothing  of  the  kind.  I  will  certainly 
speak  to  the  gardener." 

The  whole  of  Wilde's  comic  dialogue  is  notable 
for  its  sense  of  phrase,  its  general  high-pressure 
excellence,  and,  in  particular,  its  deft  use  of  repe- 
tition. When  that  admirable  father  of  Lord 
Goring's  makes  a  habit  of  turning  up  at  the  wrong 
moment,  "It  is  very  heartless  of  him,  very  heart- 
less indeed,"  we  are  told,  and  the  words  are  no 
one's  but  Wilde's.  Perfectly  simply,  they  succeed 
in  being  quite  full  of  character.  There  is  the 
repetition  of  phrase  and  idea.  Repetition  in  the 
theatre  has  its  own  curious  effectiveness,  so  much 
greater  than  we  should  expect,  or  could  give  any 
good  reason  for.  The  journeymen  know  this,  and 
make  use  of  repetition  for  the  enforcing  of  tension 
or  the  imparting  of  some  point  of  information  we 
must  on  no  account  miss — often  so  crudely  as 
to  destroy  the  emotional  effect  they  are  trying 
to  build.  Wilde  took  up  all  the  instruments  of 
the  theatrical  journeymen,  as  we  shall  see  more 
fully  in  a  moment,  but  he  generally  proved  his 
ability  to  use  them  more  suitably.  The  repeated 
word  or  phrase  or  idea  is  a  case  in  point.  It  is  an 
instrument  that  Wilde  is  delighted  to  play  upon. 
Its  simplest  effect  may  be  illustrated  quite  easily, 
as  when  Lord  Goring,   having  turned  the  tables 

93 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

upon  Mrs.  Cheveley,  returns  to  her  the  remark  she 
has  addressed  to  him  a  few  minutes  before,  "  Oh  ! 
don't  use  big  words.  They  mean  so  Httle  " — with 
an  enormous  accumulation  in  their  effectiveness. 
Wilde  is  for  ever  pulling  off  little  effects  of  that 
sort.  But  his  use  of  dramatic  repetition  becomes 
his  own  when  he  begins  to  play  variations  upon  it. 
Who  but  Wilde  would  have  given  to  the  Duchess 
dear  nieces,  purely  in  order  that  she  might  tell  us 
again,  at  a  much  later  stage,  "  It's  those  horrid 
nieces  of  mine — the  Saville  girls — they're  always 
talking  scandal  "  ?  And  what  is  The  Importance  of 
Being  Earnest  but  a^triumph  of  the  deftly  repeated 
motive  ?  It  is  funny  to  hear  in  the  first  act  from 
Gwendolen's  lips  that  there  is  something  in  that 
name  that  inspires  absolute  confidence  ;  it  is  more 
than  twice  as  funny  in  the  second  act  to  hear  from 
Cecily's  lips  the  same  thing  ;  and  further  than  that 
Wilde  does  not  go,  for  he  understands,  as  the 
common  writer  of  farce  does  not,  the  precise  point 
at  which  repetition  ceases  to  be  serviceable.^  He 
never  makes  the  mistake  of  thinking  that  because 

1  His  plays  have  the  artist's  fear  of  over-emphasis,  in 
a  theatre  where  over-emphasis  is  the  journeyman's  substi- 
tute for  clearness  of  design  and  diction.  "  In  printing  the 
new  play,  will  you  see  that,  instead  of  italics,  the  words 
emphasized  are  spaced  .  .  .  ?  It  is,  I  believe,  a  Swedish 
idea,  but  in  spite  of  that  I  like  it.  Italics  are  to  me  over- 
emphasis."— Wilde,  Letter  to  a  friend,  March  20,  1899 
(unpublished). 
94 


OSCAR  WILDE 

one  baby  or  one  pair  of  lovers  is  funny,  and 
because  two  babies  or  two  pairs  of  lovers  are  twice 
as  funny,  that  six  babies  or  six  pairs  of  lovers  are 
of  necessity  six  times  as  funny.  Shakespeare 
might  have  made  the  wood  near  Athens  far  more 
populous  with  lovers,  but  he  did  not ;  Wilde  might 
have  gone  on  adding  to  the  number  of  those  inspired 
by  the  name  of  Ernest,  but  he  did  not ;  both  were 
masters  of  the  art  of  dramatic  repetition.  But 
perhaps  Wilde's  subtlest  achievement  in  the  art 
is  the  Duchess  of  Berwick's  little  chatterbox,  who 
makes  "Yes,  mamma,"  serve  all  the  purposes  of 
polite  conversation,  including  engagement  in 
marriage.  She  may  vary  her  intonation,  she  may 
be  permitted  the  luxury  of  an  interrogation  point 
or  even  of  a  note  of  exclamation,  but  by  the  words 
her  author  has  given  her  she  is  bound  ;  and  yet 
it  is  impossible  to  say  she  is  false  to  character. 
This  is  her  apotheosis  : 

Duchess  of  Berwick.  Agatha,  darling  !  [Beckons  her 
over]. 

Lady  Agatha.    Yes,  mamma  ! 

Duchess  of  Berwick  [aside].  Did  Mr.  Hopper  defi- 
nitely  

Lady  Agatha.    Yes,  mamma. 

Duchess  of  Berwick.  And  what  answer  did  you  give 
him,  dear  child  ? 

Lady  Agatha.    Yes,  mamma. 

Duchess  of  Berwick  [affectionately].  My  dear  one  ! 
You  always  say  the  right  thing.  Mr.  Hopper  1  James  ! 
Agatha  has  told  me  everything.  How  cleverly  you  have 
both  kept  your  secret 

95 


^ 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

Hopper.  You  don't  mind  my  taking  Agatha  off  to 
Australia,  then,  Duchess  ? 

Duchess  of  Berwick.  To  Australia  ?  Oh,  don't 
mention  that  dreadful  vulgar  place. 

Hopper.    But  she  said  she'd  like  to  come  with  me. 

Duchess  of  Berwick  [severely].  Did  you  say  that, 
Agatha  ? 

Lady  Agatha.    Yes,  mamma. 

Duchess  of  Berwick.  Agatha,  you  say  the  most  silly 
things  possible.  .  .  . 

"  It  is  perfectly  phrased  " — as  the  clever  people  in 
Wilde's  comedies  retort  upon  the  plain  people 
when  they  ask  what  is  meant.  Before  we  leave, 
for  the  moment,  the  verbal  side  of  Wilde's  art,  we 
shall  do  well  to  notice  his  mastery  of  the  perfect 
phrase.  The  Archdeacon,  for  example,  whose 
conversation  for  the  drawing-room  is  limited  to  the 
exceptional  ailments  of  Mrs.  Archdeacon  : 

The  Archdeacon.  Her  deafness  is  a  great  privation 
to  her.  She  can't  even  hear  my  sermons  now.  She  reads 
them  at  home.  But  she  has  many  resources  in  herself, 
many  resources. 

Lady  Hunstanton.     She  reads  a  good  deal,  I  suppose  ? 

The  Archdeacon.  Just  the  very  largest  print.  The 
eyesight  is  rapidly  going.  But  she's  never  morbid,  never 
morbid. 

"  The  eyesight  is  rapidly  going  " — how  perfect  that 
choice  of  the  definite  article,  and  how  irresistible  ! 
It  is  for  his  mastery  over  these  little  matters  of  appeal 
to  the  ear  that  Wilde  the  dramatist  can  hardly  be 
over- valued.  His  drama  is  "  perfectly  phrased." 
96 


OSCAR  WILDE 

But  it  would   be  a  mistake  to   assume   that 
Wilde's  complement  as  a  dramatist  stops  short  at 
a  hold  over  words.     It  is  easy  to  see  that  a  writer 
whose   diction   was   so   self-consciously  clear-cut, 
the  best  of  whose  work  had  always  the  quality  of 
good  conversation,  would  turn  to  the  theatre  to 
hear,  as  it  were,  his  own  voice.     The  theatre  was 
to  Wilde  the  mirror,  into  which  only,  according  to 
his  SalomS,  we  should  look.     When  he  comes  to 
the  theatre,  however,  we  see,  not  by  his  sense  of 
speech  alone,  that  for  the  theatre  he  is  predestinate. 
Another   and   infinitely   more   subtle   mastery   is 
Wilde's.     Its  symbol  is  the  famous  entry  of  Jack, 
"  dressed    in    the    deepest   mourning,"    into   the 
second  act  of  The  Importance  of  Being  Earnest. 
Here   is   something,    it   cannot   be   too   strongly 
emphasized,  that  is  altogether  above  speech.     It 
may  stand  for  the  elusive  part  of  the  dramatist's 
art,  by  which,  above  all  other  gifts,  if  he  have  it, 
we  know  him  to  be  a  dramatist.     It  is  the  ability 
to  use  the  theatre,  none  of  its  multiplex  oppor- 
tunities going  unemployed.     One  would  say  that  it 
is  the  black  standing  figure,  so  solemnly  intrusive, 
that  causes  the  laughter  to  go  up,  percussion  upon 
repercussion.     But    there    is    nothing    irresistibly 
hilarious  in  a  figure  dressed  in  deep  mourning,  eveii 
in  sheer  physical  contrast  with  an  English  garden 
on  an  afternoon  in  July.     The  preparation  is  every- 
thing.    It  is  the  triumph  of  comic  preparation  of 
which  our  laughter  is  the  sign.     Wilde's  mastery 

G  97 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

of  dramatic  preparation  is  something  that  so  rarely 
deserted  him  that  we  are  bound  to  concede  it  to 
him  as  one  of  the  most  native  of  his  gifts.  Look 
only  at  the  first  act  of  this  comedy,  the  sandwiches, 
the  mystery  of  Ernest,  the  intriguing  mention  of 
Cecily,  the  Bunburying,  the  artfully  nonchalant 
curtain  that  leaves  us  so  furiously  wishing  to  go 
on.  This  first  act  is  the  perfect  preparation  for 
everything  in  the  comedy  that  surprisingly  follows  ; 
the  sufficient  preparation,  the  only  just  and  most 
beautifully  sufficient  preparation,  for  the  entry  of 
Jack  dressed  in  mourning  for  the  non-existent 
brother  who  is  at  present  making  love  to  Cecily 
in  the  garden.  There  is  not  a  word  too  little,  there 
is  not  a  word  too  much  ;  un jeopardized,  the  effect 
is  an  effect  of  comic  preparation  unequalled  in  the 
English  theatre  in  its  delicate  certainty  since 
Sheridan's  screen  fell  down.  Wilde  never  did 
anything  else  quite  so  good,  because  he  never  wrote 
any  other  comedy  nearly  so  spontaneously  perfect ; 
but  we  may  find  in  all  his  work  the  same  ability. 
The  return  of  Lord  Goring  from  the  conservatory, 
in  the  fourth  act  of  An  Ideal  Husband,  "  with  an 
entirely  new  buttonhole,"  is,  on  a  smaller  scale 
of  preparation,  just  the  same  thing  ;  we  know, 
from  talk  of  buttonholes,  from  talk  of  "  the  usual 
palm-tree  "  in  the  conservatory,  just  who  has  made 
the  buttonhole  for  him  ;  the  incident  is  only  less 
exciting  in  the  theatre  because  its  importance  is 
subsidiary  and  not  central.  It  is  the  achievement 
98 


OSCAR  WILDE 

of  Jack's  entry  that  every  single  thread  of  the 
comedy  is  drawn  up  into  this  moment,  a  moment 
whose  appeal  would  seem  to  be  visual  merely. 
It  is  the  misfortune  of  the  best  things  in  the 
other  comedies  of  Wilde  that  they  are  but  sub- 
sidiary to  a  central  theme  that  does  not  interest 
us  at  all.  This  is  the  penalty  of  Wilde's  clever- 
ness, out  of  which  he  wrote  his  plays  about  good 
women  and  long-suffering  politicians,  to  please  the 
actor-managers,  and  to  win  for  himself  some  kind 
of  a  mirror  into  which  he  might  look,  albeit 
flawed. 

But  if  Wilde  in  these  plays  is  clever,  he  is  not 
stupid- clever,  in  that  useful  distinction  of  Lord 
Goring's.  The  third  act  of  An  Ideal  Husband 
really  is  the  "  greatest  "  of  "  great  "  scenes.  We 
may  imagine  its  author,  although  not  caring  at 
all  for  the  reputation  of  his  innocent  woman  nor 
for  the  villainy  of  his  villainess,  yet  taking  pleasure 
in  the  thought  that  he  had  beaten  the  journeymen 
at  their  own  game.  It  will  be  remembered  that 
we  have  Mrs.  Cheveley  hidden  in  the  drawing- 
room,  and  the  efforts  of  Goring,  believing  it  is 
Lady  Chiltern  who  is  there,  to  keep  Chiltern  from 
opening  the  door.  W^e  have  the  scene  of  the 
bracelet  between  Goring  and  Mrs.  Cheveley,  in 
which  he  turns  the  tables  upon  her.  We  have  the 
scene  of  the  letter,  with  its  ironic  conclusion, 
"  Thanks.  I  am  never  going  to  try  to  harm 
Robert  Chiltern  again  " — "  Fortunately  you  have 

99 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

not  the  chance,  Mrs.  Cheveley,"  when  she  has 
just  stolen  the  letter  before  our  eyes.  There  is  the 
brilliant  invention  of  the  end  ;  serving  to  carry  us 
over  to  the  fourth  act  with  its  moment  of  surprising 
dramatic  irony  again,  "  .  .  .  at  all  costs  it  must 
not  reach  him.  [Goes  to  the  door  and  opens  it]  Oh  ! 
Robert  is  coming  upstairs  with  the  letter  in  his 
hand."  When  Sir  Arthur  Pinero  sets  a  scheming 
woman  to  listen  in  an  antechamber,  we  are  to 
believe  that  the  most  terrible  consequences  for  all 
concerned  hang  in  the  balance.  When  Mrs.  Cheveley 
is  discovered,  and  the  question  put  to  her  whether 
listening  to  wonderful  things  through  keyholes 
is  not  rather  like  tempting  Providence,  her  reply 
is,  "  Oh  !  surely  Providence  can  resist  temptation 
by  this  time,"  and  the  scene  is  less  than  the 
epigram  which  is  its  conclusion  and  excuse.  Just 
the  same  careless  brilliance  marks  Wilde's  other 
"  great  scenes  " — the  third  act  of  Lady  Winder- 
mere, with  its  business  of  the  burned  letter,  the 
fan,  and  the  unobserved  exit ;  the  third  act  of 
A  Woman  of  No  Importance,  with  the  kissing  of 
Hester  by  Illingworth  and  the  "  Stop,  Gerald, 
stop  !  He  is  your  own  father  I  " — a  culmination 
for  which  we  have  been  prepared  as  skilfully  as 
Lady  Windermere's  simple  words  to  her  servant, 
"  I  am  particularly  anxious  to  hear  the  names  quite 
clearly,"  prepare  us  for  what  is  to  follow  in  that 
play.  Wilde's  work  for  the  managers,  careless  in 
detail,  insincere  in  essentials  as  it  may  be,  yet 
100 


OSCAR  WILDE 

shows  him  always  with  but  little  to  learn  about  the 
mystery  of  the  theatre. 

The  insincerity  we  need  not  labour.  That  the 
so-called  De  Profundi^  has  sincerity  is  an  arguable 
proposition,  although,  since  it  is  an  "  important 
matter,"  those  who  make  much  of  sincerity  would 
probably  be  better  advised,  on  Wilde's  own 
showing,  to  let  their  admiration  stop  short  at  the 
style.  But  the  insincerity  of  the  emotional  crises 
shared  in  by  Lady  Windermere  and  Mrs.  Erlynne, 
by  Illingworth  and  Gerald  and  Hester  and  Mrs. 
Arbuthnot,  by  Sir  Robert  and  Lady  Chiltern,  is 
sufficiently  established  by  the  fact  that  they  do 
not  interest  us.  Evidence,  if  external  evidence  be 
wanted,  is  not  lacking  that  they  did  not  interest 
Wilde.  If  Wilde's  real  interest  in  his  first  play  for 
the  London  theatre  had  been  in  the  "  good  woman  " 
it  was  ostensibly  about,  he  would  not  have  allowed 
the  ending  of  its  first  act  to  be  altered  in  represen- 
tation. It  will  be  remembered  that  the  scene  as 
Wilde  wrote  it  reads  as  follows  : 

Lord  Windermere  {calling  after  her].  Margaret ! 
Margaret  1  [A  pause.]  My  God  !  What  shall  I  do  ?  I 
dare  not  tell  her  who  this  woman  really  is.  The  shame 
would  kill  her. 

[Sinks  doxvn  into  a  chair  and  buries  his  face  in  his  hands.] 

But  in  the  theatre  these  words  were  given,  "  My 
God  !  What  shall  I  do  ?  I  dare  not  tell  her  that 
this    woman    is    her    mother  !  "     They   were    so 

101 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

given  with  the  approval  of  the  author,  although 
continued  interest  in  the  central  theme  of  the  play 
becomes  quite  impossible  if  we  learn  the  truth  any 
earlier  than  the  point  near  the  end  of  the  second 
act  at  which  the  author  had  originally  taken  care 
to  impart  it.  But  it  did  not  matter.  Neither  he 
nor  we  are  under  any  delusion  that  it  seriously 
mattered.  The  only  importance  of  this  maladroit 
piece  of  interference  with  the  "  sympathetic  "  story 
of  a  woman  more  sinned  against  than  sinning  is 
that  it  spoiled  a  pretty  pattern.  To  write  a  play 
whose  first  act  ended  "  Oh  !  no  one.  No  one  in 
particular.  A  woman  of  no  importance,"  and 
whose  last  act  ended  "  Oh  !  no  one.  No  one  in 
particular.  A  man  of  no  importance,"  went  for 
far  more  with  Wilde,  it  is  likely,  than  the  story 
of  a  woman's  wrongs  triumphed  over  which  came 
in  between.  It  must  have  been  so,  or  it  could  not 
have  happened  that  the  most  interesting  thing 
about  the  completed  story  is  its  decoration.  In 
fact  Wilde  is  at  one  with  Mr.  Bayes  of  "The 
Rehearsal "  in  saying,  "  Why,  what  the  devil  is  a 
Plot  good  for,  but  to  bring  in  fine  things  ?  " 

And  now  it  is  time  to  turn  from  the  group  of 
plays  which  Wilde  wrote  out  of  his  cleverness  to 
please  the  managers,  to  the  group  of  plays  which 
he  wrote  to  please  himself.  These  are  not  absolute 
groups  :  The  Importance  of  Being  Earnest,  while 
finding  its  genesis  in  the  first,  can  have  no  possible 
cause  for  separation  from  the  second  ;  while  Vera, 
102 


OSCAR  WILDE 

one  may  surmise,  was  written  less  to  please  him- 
self than  to  please  the  United  States  of  America. 
Still,  there  is  good  reason  for  separating  Vera,  The 
Duchess  of  Padua,  SalomS,  La  Sainte  Courtisane, 
and  A  Florentine  Tragedy  from  the  body  of  the 
modem  or  drawing-room  plays,  if  it  is  only  a 
reason  of  convenience.  That  it  is  little  more  will 
be  plain  when  it  is  remembered  that  Vera  and  The 
Duchess  of  Padua  were  very  early  plays,  that 
SalomS  dates  from  the  year  of  Wilde's  first  entry 
into  the  commercial  theatres,  and  that  La  Sainte 
Courtisane  and  A  Florentine  Tragedy,  partly  written 
in  the  year  of  his  exit  from  the  theatres,  were  left 
still  uncompleted  at  his  death. 

The  only  possible  importance  of  Vera  is  that  it 
shows  Wilde  to  have  been  possessed  quite  early 
of  what  is  sometimes  called  an  aptitude  for  the 
theatre.  The  dramatist  who  put  out  the  lights  at 
the  end  of  the  first  act  of  An  Ideal  Husband — so 
that  the  room  became  almost  dark,  the  only  light 
there  was  coming  from  the  great  chandelier  that 
hung  over  the  staircase  and  illumined  the  tapestry 
of  the  Triumph  of  Love — differed  only  in  length 
of  experience  from  the  dramatist  who  gave  to  the 
first  act  of  his  drama  of  Russian  revolution,  an 
inn  scene,  a  "  large  door  opening  on  snowy  land- 
scape at  back  of  stage."  This  play  about  a 
Tsarevitch  who  turns  to  the  cause  of  the  people  is 
remarkable,  otherwise,  for  nothing  but  aptitude 
in  its  worser  sense ;    an  aptitude  to  write  like 

103 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

Shakespeare — "  warmed  by  the  same  smi,  nurtured 
by  the  same  air,  fashioned  of  flesh  and  blood  like 
to  our  own,  wherein  are  they  different  to  us  {sic\ 
save  that  they  starve  while  we  surfeit,"  etc.  etc.  ; 
a  young  man's  aptitude  to  work  himself  into  great 
excitement  over  a  theme  for  which  he  does  not 
really  care  in  the  least.  Much  of  Vera  is  written 
in  a  prose  which  unfortunately  proves  to  be  verse  : 
"  Our  wedding  night ! — And  if  Death  came  himself, 
methinks  that  I  could  kiss  his  pallid  mouth,  and 
suck  sweet  poison  from  it,"  and  so  on.  The  next 
play  is  written  in  what  may  be  called  intentional 
verse,  and  is  certainly  better  in  every  way.  It  still 
echoes  Shakespeare  ;  we  hear  about  "  the  dreadful 
secret  of  a  father's  murder  "  ;  the  play's  comic 
relief  is  quite  comically  close  to  its  excellent 
original : 

MoRANZONE.    Who  is  accused  of  having  killed  him  ? 

Second  Citizen.     Why,  the  prisoner,  sir. 

MoRANZONE.     But  who  is  the  prisoner  ? 

Second  Citizen.  Why,  he  that  is  accused  of  the  Duke's 
murder. 

MoRANzoNE.     I  mean,  what  is  his  name  ? 

Second  Citizen.  Faith,  the  same  which  his  godfathers 
gave  him.  .  .  . 

and  so  on,  eight  years  together,  dinners  and  suppers 
and  sleeping  hours  excepted.  Guido,  when  he 
says  to  the  Duchess — 

Everything  is  dead — 
Save  one  thing  only,  which  shall  die  to-night, 
104 


OSCAR  WILDE 

shows  a  true  appreciation  of  one  of  the  most 
admirable  of  dramatic  utterances,  "  Those  that 
are  married  already,  all  but  one,  shall  live."  For 
the  rest,  The  Duchess  of  Padua  is  sufficiently 
Wilde's.  Its  culminating  scene  is  on  the  palace 
stairway,  up  which  young  Guido  creeps  to 
avenge  his  father's  murder  on  the  cruel  Duke 
who  sleeps  with  Beatrice  beyond  the  curtain  at 
the  stairway's  head.  Before  he  reaches  it,  out 
from  the  curtain  slips  the  Duchess  with  a  bloody 
dagger  in  her  hand  ;  for  love  of  him,  she  herself 
has  done  the  deed.  Seeing  it  done,  he  recoils 
from  her  ;  and  seeing  him  recoil  from  her  and  her 
deed  of  love,  she  recoils  in  her  turn  and  denounces 
her  lover  as  the  murderer  to  the  palace  guard. 
That  is  the  tableau  on  which  the  third  act  ends. 
The  final  tableau  is  also  typically  Wilde's.  Guido 
is  in  prison,  awaiting  the  hangman's  coming.  To 
him  comes  Beatrice,  and  drinks  the  poison  provided 
for  Guido  by  a  kindly  gaoler.  They  live  in  love 
together  for  the  few  moments  while  the  poison  does 
its  work — a  poignant  situation  that  M.  Loti  has 
made  good  use  of  in  a  later  drama.  She  dies,  and 
Guido  kills  himself  with  her  dagger.  "As  he 
falls  across  her  knees,"  we  read,  "  he  clutches 
at  the  cloak  which  is  on  the  back  of  the  chair,  and 
throws  it  entirely  over  her.  There  is  a  little  pause. 
Then  down  the  passage  comes  the  tramp  of  sol- 
diers. ..."  Thus  early,  we  see  Wilde's  visual 
faculty  at  work.     The  very  picture  of  the  stage  is 

105 


DRAMATIQ  PORTRAITS 

a  design.  The  play  is  nothing  more,  a  beautiful 
design  ;   when  the  Duchess  says  : 

Sit  down  here, 
A  little  lower  than  me  ;  yes,  just  so,  sweet, 
That  I  may  rim  my  fingers  through  your  hair. 
And  see  your  face  turn  upwards  like  a  flower 
To  meet  my  kiss  ; 

the  same  kind  of  pleasure  is  ours  as  when  Cecily 
puts  her  fingers  through  her  dear  boy's  hair  and 
hopes  that  it  curls  naturally.  The  best  of  Wilde's 
work  is  one  in  spirit ;  and  so  it  is  on  the  whole 
with  reassurance  that  we  find  in  Vera  a  Prince 
Paul  Maraloffski  who  is  nothing  but  an  early 
Illingworth,  and  hear  in  this  play  of  sixteenth- 
century  Padua,  as  we  might  hear  in  any  one  of 
the  comedies  of  the  drawing-room,  that  it  is  only 
very  ugly  or  very  beautiful  women  who  ever  hide 
their  faces. 

As  for  action,  it  is  in  Wilde's  drama  never  other 
'^han  a  pattern.  Each  of  the  plays  in  this  group 
is,  not  less  but  rather  more  than  each  of  the  modern 
plays,  an  "  essay  on  decorative  art."  Salomd  is  a 
recurring  pattern.  When  ten  years  pass  and  we 
come  to  this  play,  we  find  it  to  be  a  variation  on 
the  same  theme  of  double  recoil  as  that  on  which 
the  loves  of  Guido  and  Beatrice  were  a  decoration. 
The  daughter  of  Herodias  is  amorous  of  the  body 
of  lokanaan  the  prophet,  and,  when  he  scorns  her, 
her  amorousness  turns  to  a  hatred  that  is  only 
medicable  by  the  gift  of  the  prophet's  severed  head. 
106 


OSCAR  WILDE 

The  Tetrach  is  amorous  of  Salome,  and  when  he 
turns  on  the  steps  of  the  palace  and  sees  Salome 
illumined  by  the  sudden  moonlight  he  orders  her 
to  be  crushed  beneath  the  shields  of  the  captains. 
But  Salomi  is  master  work,  where  the  earlier  plays 
were  the  work  of  an  apprentice.  The  earlier  plays 
were  over- opulent ;  Salomi  is  the  triumph  of 
selection.  Salomi  is  written  in  French  that  is  not 
idiomatic  but  is  suitable  ;  it  has  been  rendered 
into  Wilde's  English  excellently  by  another  hand. 
In  Salomi  all  Wilde's  characteristic  abilities  as  a 
dramatist  find  their  most  concentrated  and  effec- 
tive expression.  Here  the  art  of  preparation 
issues  in  the  creation  of  apprehensiveness — always 
the  largest  part  in  the  success  of  tragic  drama, 
viewed  upon  its  technical  side.  Here  verbal  repe- 
tition is  used  directly  for  the  evocation  of  an  atmo- 
sphere of  foreboding.  The  talk  about  the  moon, 
the  talk  about  to-night's  strange  beauty  of  the 
princess,  achieve  their  effect  absolutely.  The 
dialogue  is  full  of  an  extraordinary  insistence,  beat 
upon  beat,  the  rhythmic  blows  of  the  worker  in 
some  strange  metal  who  is  unerring  in  his  art. 
*'  Laisse-moi  baiser  ta  bouche,  lokanaan."  The 
body  of  the  Young  Syrian  falls  dead  between  them. 
"  Princesse,  le  jeune  capitaine  vient  de  se  tuer. ..." 

Salome.    Laisse-moi  baiser  ta  bouche,  lokanaan. 

Je  baiserai  ta  bouche,  lokanaan,  je  baiserai 
ta  bouche. 

107 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

Unremittingly,  the  blows  go  on.  The  Pharisees 
and  the  Sadducees  dispute  about  angels  ;  Tigellinus 
holds  the  Stoics  who  kill  themselves  to  be  ridiculous 
people,  he  himself  regards  them  as  being  perfectly 
ridiculous ;  Herodias  thinks  that  her  husband  is 
ridiculous  with  his  talk  of  the  moon,  which  is  like 
the  moon,  that  is  all ;  the  voice  of  the  invisible 
prophet  comes  again  and  again ;  Herod  looks  all 
the  while  at  Salome  with  an  extraordinary  concen- 
tration— until  the  spell,  become  almost  more  than 
we  can  bear,  is  broken.  "  Je  veux  qu'on  m'apporte 
pr6sentement  dans  un  bassin  d'argent  ...  la  tete 
d'lokanaan."  Surprise  is  used  here  not  to  comic 
effect  but  for  the  heightening  of  this  apprehen- 
siveness  ;  the  soldiers  have  no  sooner  said  that  the 
Tetrach  will  not  come  to  this  place,  for  he  never 
comes  on  the  terrace,  than  he  comes.  Salome  may 
not  have  been  worth  doing,  but  it  is  useless  to 
deny  the  astonishing  mastery  with  which  it  is 
done.  To  Maeterlinck  Wilde  may  have  owed  the 
instrument  of  verbal  repetition,  but  not  the  fero- 
cious effectiveness  of  its  use  ;  and  it  was  not  until 
many  years  later,  and  then  to  less  effect,  that 
Maeterlinck  threw  across  the  pattern  of  a  play 
the  voice  of  Him  of  whom  the  prophet  lokanaan 
was  the  forerunner.  Wilde  is  much  more  reminis- 
cent of  Maeterlinck  when  he  is  writing  easily  and 
badly  in  the  modern  plays.  "  Love  is  easily 
killed,"  says  Lady  Windermere.  "  Oh !  how 
108 


OSCAR  WILDE 

easily  love  is  killed."  Anyone  could  have  written 
that ;  but  no  one  but  Wilde,  not  even  Maeterlinck, 
could  have  written  SalomS,  even  if  he  had  wished 
to  do  so. 

There  remain  the  two  fragments.  The  nearest 
of  these  to  Salomi  is  La  Sainte  Courtisane,  or  The 
Woman  Covered  with  Jewels,  which  is  written  in 
English,  so  far  as  it  is  written  at  all.  Charac- 
teristically, the  decoration  is  there  before  the 
theme  ;  the  woman  is  covered  with  jewels  before 
she  is  created  woman.  But  it  is  easy  to  see  that 
Myrrhina  the  courtesan  who  comes  to  the  desert, 
hearing  of  the  beautiful  young  hermit,  him  who 
will  not  look  on  the  face  of  woman,  and  coveting 
his  love,  was  destined  in  the  completed  play  to 
gain  not  love  but  Christianity,  while  Honorius  the 
hermit,  losing  what  he  gave,  went  back  to  Alexan- 
dria to  live  the  life  of  pleasure  from  which  Myrrhina 
had  come.  We  have  not  all  that ;  but  what  we 
have  is  the  atmosphere  of  expectation  created  by 
the  talk  of  two  desert- dwellers,  and  by  the  words 
of  the  woman,  calculated  as  surely  as  the  words  of 
Salome,  "  How  strangely  he  spake  to  me,  and  with 
what  scorn  did  he  regard  me.  I  wonder  why  he 
spake  to  me  so  strangely."  We  have  speeches 
and  portions  of  speeches,  filled  with  the  names  of 
jewels  and  the  names  of  perfumes  and  the  names 
of  fruits ;  names  which  decorate  over-heavily  the 
Poems  in  Prose,   but  are  here   decorations   upon 

109 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

speeches  nerved  undeniably  with  drama.  And  then 
abruptly  we  have  the  fragment's  end  : 

Come  with  me,  Honorius,  and  I  will  clothe  you  in  a  tunic 
of  silk.  I  will  smear  your  body  with  myrrh  and  put 
spikenard  on  your  hair.  I  will  clothe  you  in  hyacinth  and 
put  honey  in  your  mouth.    Love 

Honorius.    There  is  no  love  but  the  love  of  God. 

With  the  antithesis,  sharp  as  strophe  and  anti- 
strophe,  in  our  ears,  we  may  go  back  to  the  "  How 
hard  good  women  are  !  How  weak  bad  women 
are  !  "  of  Lady  Windermere's  drawing-room.  Or 
forward  to  the  end  of  A  Florentine  Tragedy  : 

BiANCA.  Why 

Did  you  not  tell  me  you  were  so  strong  ? 

SiMONE.  Why 

Did  you  not  tell  me  you  were  beautiful  ? 

These  are  husband  and  wife.  It  was  like  Wilde 
to  provide  this  fragment  not  with  a  beginning, 
but  with  an  end — the  end  in  which  he  was 
interested.  Another  hand  has  since  provided  very 
cleverly  the  necessary  beginning,  between  wife 
and  would-be  lover,  so  that  the  play  is  a  practicable 
play  for  the  stage.  Wilde's  interest  is  in  the  entry 
of  the  husband,  his  slow  crafty  speeches  about  the 
beautiful  stuffs  it  is  his  trade  to  sell,  the  fight  in 
the  half-darkness  after  Bianca  has  put  out  the 
torch,  her  sharp  whisper  "  Kill  him  !  Kill  him  !  " 
to  her  lover ;  followed  ever  so  suddenly  by  the 
double  change  when  the  young  noble  is  dead,  and 
husband  and  wife  raise  their  eyes  to  one  another 
110 


OSCAR  WILDE 

with  new  wonder.  It  is,  as  Wilde  left  it,  an 
interesting  fragment,  not  innocent  of  echoing  now 
the  "  Merchant  of  Venice  "  and  now  "  Othello,"  but 
in  its  sheer  dramatic  intensity  far  less  near  to  his 
earlier  play  in  verse  than  to  Salomi.  Three  other 
similar  plays  he  invented,  Ahab  and  Isabel,  Pharaoh 
and  The  Cardinal  of  Arragon,  but  did  not  write 
down.  We  learn  of  them  from  his  literary  executor, 
who  adds,  "  Pharaoh  was  intensely  dramatic  and 
perhaps  more  original  than  any  of  the  group." 
With  Salome  and  the  two  fragments  of  plays 
before  us,  altogether  apart  from  The  Importance 
of  Being  Earnest,  it  is  impossible  not  to  believe 
that  Wilde  would  have  gone  on  adding  to  his  own 
peculiar  mastery  in  the  theatre. 

Somewhere  in  his  Truth  of  Masks  Wilde  gives 
some  examples  of  the  employment  of  costume  "  as 
a  mode  of  intensifying  dramatic  situation  " — that 
he  should  do  so  is  evidence  of  what  we  have  meant 
by  the  single  spirit  informing  his  work.  But  the 
principal  concern  of  all  his  drama  is  the  employ- 
ment of  words  to  the  same  purpose.  Sometimes 
they  are  the  mere  "  tinsel  phrases  "  which  Bianca, 
in  Mr.  Sturge  Moore's  clever  prelude  to  the  tragedy, 
protests  have  no  power  to  move  her  at  all ;  at 
other  times  we  may  say  of  Wilde's  diction  for  the 
theatre,  as  Simone  said  of  his  Lucca  damask,  "  Is 
it  not  soft  as  water,  strong  as  steel  ?  "  His  prose, 
of  course,  is  better  than  his  verse.  At  all  times 
Wilde's  insistence  upon  the  supremacy  of  words 

111 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

in  a  theatre  which  had  forgotten  how  to  use  them 
was  of  the  highest  possible  importance  to  the 
theatre.  That  his  understanding  of  the  needs  of 
the  theatre  did  not  stop  short  at  giving  it  good 
words  we  have  seen  ;  that  he  saw  the  theatre  as 
a  single  art,  in  need  above  all  of  a  unifying  imagina- 
tion, is  clear  from  the  following  : 

As  a  rule,  the  hero  is  smothered  in  bric-a-brac  and  palm- 
trees,  lost  in  the  gilded  abyss  of  Louis  Quatorze  furniture, 
or  reduced  to  a  mere  midge  in  the  midst  of  marqueterie  ; 
whereas  the  background  should  always  be  kept  as  a  back- 
ground, and  colour  subordinated  to  effect.  This,  of  course, 
can  only  be  done  when  there  is  one  single  mind  directing 
the  whole  production.  .  .  . 

Wilde  was  thus  the  first  to  foreshadow  the  func- 
tion of  our  present-day  Producer.  He  began  "  to 
quarrel  generally  with  most  modern  scene-paint- 
ing." It  is  as  an  influence  on  the  art  of  the 
theatre,  the  influence  of  an  artist  respecting  the 
domain  on  which  he  entered,  that  he  will  find  his 
true  importance.  His  own  work  for  the  theatre 
has  not  always  an  equal  value.  He  conceded 
much  ;  when  he  conceded  too  much  he  lost  interest, 
as  in  his  men  and  women  of  the  drawing-room  who 
use  the  phrases  of  conventional  theatrical  emotion 
and  who  bury  their  faces  in  their  hands.  So  far 
from  omitting  the  Expected,  he  achieved  it,  at 
these  times,  like  a  fatality.  It  must  be  noted  that 
the  best  of  his  plays,  his  comedy  of  youth  on  the 
one  hand  and  his  tragedy  of  an  antique  corruption 
112 


OSCAR  WILDE 

on  the  other,  set  up  their  conventions,  which  are 
quite  perfect ;  while  the  "  great  "  scenes  of  his 
emotional  drama  are  conducted  entirely  by  means 
of  the  "  soliloquy "  and  the  "  aside,"  in  the 
most  disappointingly  conventional  manner.  When 
Wilde  is  not  interested  he  is  careless  ;  when  he  is 
careless,  he  loses  style.  He  is  always  least  the 
stylist  when  he  is  least  sincere. 

The  nearest  perhaps  that  we  shall  come  to  under- 
standing Wilde's  sincerity,  the  nearest  certainly 
that,  for  our  present  purposes,  we  need  come,  is  to 
point  to  that  theme  which  we  have  seen  to  run 
through  several  of  his  plays,  as  it  runs  through  The 
Portrait  of  Mr.  W.  H.  also — the  theme  that  when 
you  convert  some  one  to  an  idea,  you  lose  your 
faith  in  it.  And  what  is  this  but  a  pattern  ?  The 
inevitability  of  SalomS  is  not  the  inevitability 
which  takes  its  rise  in  character.  It  may  or  may 
not  be  a  very  dangerous  thing  to  tell  the  name  of 
one's  god.  It  might  or  might  not  happen  that 
strength  would  call  up  love,  and  love  make  beauty 
visible.  We  do  not  know  these  things  to  be  true 
of  the  saint  and  the  courtesan,  the  husband  and 
wife  of  Florence ;  we  accept  them  for  what  they 
are,  the  rhythmic  basis  of  a  pattern.  The  drama 
to  Wilde,  as  the  intellect  to  Lord  Illingworth,  is 
an  instrument  on  which  one  plays,  that  is  all.  If 
one  plays  with  genuine  enjoyment,  that,  we  may 
say,  is  sincerity.  Wilde  came  as  near  to  the  truth 
about  his  own  art  as  we  are  likely  to  come,  in  the 

H  113 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

course  of  that  little  essay  on  London  models  for  a 
magazine,  in  which  he  spoke  of  the  self-conscious 
artist  and  his  small  corner  of  life  ;  "  but  this  very- 
isolation  leads  often,"  he  said,  "  to  mere  mannerism 
in  the  painter,  and  robs  him  of  that  broad  accept- 
ance of  the  general  facts  of  life  which  is  the  very 
essence  of  art."  Wilde,  in  his  own  small  corner, 
did  not  fail  to  put  into  a  comedy  that  is  all  his 
own  a  ready  responsiveness  to  the  surface  beauties 
and  absurdities  of  organized  humanity,  an  innocent 
responsiveness  and  irresponsibility  that  have  some- 
thing childlike  and  delightful.  He  achieved  an 
intensity  of  vision  which,  it  is  true,  is  of  the  essence 
of  the  art  of  drama  ;  but  in  achieving  it  he  spoiled 
himself  for  that  without  which  the  greatest  work 
may  not  be  done  in  the  drama  or  any  other  art — a 
broad  acceptance  of  the  general  facts  of  life. 


114 


IV 
J.  M.  BARRIE 

BETWEEN    Wilde   and   Mr.   Bernard  Shaw 
in  the  dramatic    pantheon,   between    the 
drama     which    is    decoration     and    the 
drama  which  is  dialectics,  is  the  place  of  J.  M. 
Barrie — Sir    James    Barrie,    "  for    his    services." 
A  reaction  from  the  one  as  they  have  proved  a 
corrective  to  the  other,  his  services  in  the  English 
theatre  are  yet  most  notable,  as  the  services  of 
Wilde  and  Mr.   Shaw  are  most  notable,   for  the 
fact  that  they  have  constituted  a  raid   on  the 
stronghold  of  the  theatre  men.     The  remarkable 
fact  about  Barrie  is  that  he  alone  among  English 
men  of  letters  in  a  century  was  able  to  enter  the 
English  theatre,   and  to  find  an  immediate  and 
lasting  welcome  there.     To  English  men  of  letters 
the  theatre  was,  it  began  to  appear,  the  Never, 
Ne^oi  Land  ;    and  there  is  no  one  who  does  not 
remember  that  the  only  people  who  went  there 
were  the  little  boys  who  had  fallen  out  of  their 
prams.     When  Shelley,  Dickens,  Browning,  Tenny- 
son,   Meredith,    Stevenson   and  Henley,    and   Mr. 

115 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

Henry  James  fell  into  the  English  theatre  out  of 
what  the  English  theatre  felt  to  be  their  proper 
perambulators,  the  English  theatre  hastened,  like 
a  dutiful  nurse,  to  put  them  back  again.  It  is 
probable  that  Wilde  might  have  routed  the  kind 
nurse ;  but  the  fact  remains  that  it  was  Barrie 
who  slipped  past  her  with  the  certainty,  when  he 
got  into  the  theatre,  of  staying  there.  Our 
dramatist  was  clever  ;  he  did  not  announce,  like 
Mr.  Shaw,  who  was  out  of  the  perambulator  soon 
after  him,  that  he  had  come  to  sack  the  fortress. 
No,  he  accepted  the  theatre  just  as  he  found  it, 
and  sat  down  inside,  and  for  ten  years  you  would 
hardly  have  known  it  was  his  deep  design  to  join 
in  the  game  of  keeping  it  open.  And  perhaps  he 
has  never  quite  joined  in,  but  just  sat  there, 
securely  inside,  and  happy  in  the  knowledge 
that  when  he  chose  to  give  the  theatre  just  the 
smallest  excuse,  however  tiny,  it  would  persist 
delightedly  in  keeping  open,  to  show  that  it  was 
glad  of  him.  Happy,  too,  in  this,  that  he  was 
not  born  inside,  like  the  theatre  men,  but  had 
memories,  glimpsed  above  the  sides  of  his  per- 
ambulator, of  the  real  and  living  world.  J.  M. 
Barrie,  man  of  the  theatre,  has  not  become  merely 
one  of  the  theatre's  men,  because,  as  we  shall  see, 
he  has  not  lost  his  detachment. 

But  neither  has  he  proved  one  of  the  lost  boys 
in  the  English  theatre.  The  real  lost  boys  in  the 
theatre  are  the  men  of  letters  who  have  made 
116 


J.  M.  BARRIE 

entry  there  more  for  experiment  than  by  vocation, 
and  we  cannot  do  better  at  the  outset  than  be 
clear  that  J.  M.  Barrie  is  not  one  of  these.  When 
the  novelist  comes  to  the  theatre  he  comes,  too 
often,  in  the  belief  that  here  is  a  shorter  but  not 
different  task,  a  kind  of  subdivision  of  his  accus- 
tomed labour,  a  pleasing  arrangement  by  which 
he  is  to  supply  the  story  and  dialogue,  and  the 
actors  and  producers  and  others  are  to  supply  all 
the  rest.  Seeing  that  he  has  not  (unless  he  write 
plays  so  near  in  form  to  the  novel  as  those  of  Mr. 
Bernard  Shaw)  to  write  down  how  or  with  what 
accompaniments  his  people  speak,  but  merely  what 
they  speak,  he  is  wont  to  make  a  novel  audibly 
vocal,  as  it  were,  and  to  ride  off  on  the  easiness 
of  the  theatre.  When  he  has  ridden  off,  however, 
we  are  left  perfectly  conscious  that,  sufficiently 
entertaining  or  delightful  as  his  story  for  the  theatre 
may  have  been,  it  has  still  been  a  story  told  not 
so  much  by  the  theatre  as  in  the  theatre.  It  is 
not  the  completely  effective  and  characteristic 
and  satisfying  deliverance,  that  is  to  say,  of  which 
each  of  the  arts  is  capable.  To  Browning,  the 
dramatic  principle  was  in  a  work  which  consisted 
of  "so  many  utterances  of  so  many  imaginary 
persons,  not  mine  "  ;  but  we  may  suppose  that 
if  the  English  theatre  of  his  day  had  not  quite 
disgusted  that  great  dramatist,  he  would  have  gone 
on  to  demonstrate  beyond  doubt  that  the  dramatic 
principle    is    something     more    than    this.     With 

117 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

Tennyson,  who  rode  off  on  the  apology  superior — 
"  although  not  intended  in  its  present  form  to 
meet  the  exigencies  of  our  modern  theatre,"  etc. — 
we  need  not  linger :  Tennyson,  in  the  theatre, 
was  just  the  lost  boy.  We  shall  do  well  to  come 
at  once  to  the  case  of  Mr.  Henry  James.  Mr. 
Henry  James,  the  novel's  complete  master,  has 
wooed  the  theatre  for  long,  and  has  yet  written 
for  it,  to  speak  generally,  dialogue  that  does  not 
bear  its  own  burden.  He  has,  in  the  theatre,  been 
unable  to  put  everything  necessary  to  complete 
revelation  into  his  people's  mouths.  The  "  aside," 
perfectly  good  part  as  it  is  of  the  poetic  convention, 
is  yet,  if  employed  in  modern  drama,  a  confession 
of  failure  from  full  mastery.  To  the  curious  in 
these  things  it  may  be  pointed  out  that  the  content 
of  the  old  "  aside  "  has  gone  into  the  new  directions 
to  the  actor  ;  for  example,  "  I  am  determined  to 
know  what  he  thinks,"  spoken  by  a  stage  person 
to  the  audience  in  the  breath  before  he  speaks  to 
his  vis-d-vis,  while  rendering  in  one  way  an  unvoiced 
thought  which  it  is  the  novelist's  simple  business  to 
take  account  of,  would,  in  the  hands  of  the  modern 
dramatist,  take  some  such  form  as  {with  determina- 
tion), preluding  an  added  subtlety  in  the  spoken 
words.  To  take,  if  we  may  for  a  moment,  a  more  com- 
plete instance  from  the  work  of  Mr.  Henry  James  : 

"  {To  herself)  Why  does  she  speak  to  me  ?      I  don't 
like  her,  nor  want  to  know  her.     {Aloud)  Thank  you, 
I'm  better.     I'm  going  out." 
118 


J.  M.  BARRIE 

— that  tells  us,  in  a  way,  ever5rthing  it  is  needful 
we  should  know  ;  but  it  is  a  close  approximation  to 
the  novelist's  way,  it  is  not  the  dramatist's  way. 
The  fact  that  the  expression  of  character  or 
intended  action  might  have  been  put  into  the 
direct  speech  itself,  or  into  a  stroke  of  the  stage 
that  is  apart  from  speech,  is  but  an  indication 
that  everything,  somehow  or  other,  might  have 
gone  into  the  scene's  unity,  instead  of  left  half 
hanging  out  like  this.  It  is,  of  course,  an  objective 
test  of  excellence.  There  are  no  conventions 
which  are  good  or  bad,  but  only  art  which  is  good 
or  bad— good,  and  better,  and  best.  The  best  art, 
all  other  things  being  equal,  is  that  which  comes 
to  us  with  the  minimum  of  interference.  The 
dramatist's  way,  in  matters  of  this  kind,  is  the 
better  way,  not  for  any  abstract  reason,  nor  for 
any  empty  technical  satisfaction  of  those  who 
fancy  that  technique  is  itself  an  end,  but  merely 
because  the  full  content  of  the  drama's  moment 
makes  more  ready  entrance  of  our  imagination 
when  shaped  thus  fitly  in  accordance  with  the 
theatre's  plan.  It  is  by  this  ability  instinctively, 
as  it  were,  to  shape  the  scene's  unity  that  one 
would  most  willingly  test  the  dramatist ;  and  it 
is  a  test  that  the  novelist  in  the  theatre,  however 
easy  or  delightful  his  dialogue,  however  searching 
his  wit,  however  profound  his  criticism  of  life, 
sometimes  fails  to  go  through.  Mr.  Arnold 
Bennett,  for  a  latter-day  example,  we  have  seen 

119 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

compose  for  the  theatre  in  novel  time ;  so  that  his 
plays,  we  would  say,  because  they  are  conceived 
in  terms  of  the  novel,  never  gather  the  dramatic 
momentum — no  moment  in  them  appears  to  be 
the  heir  of  all  the  others.  But  Barrie  does  not, 
in  either  of  these  ways,  fail  from  full  mastery. 
It  would  be  impossible,  if  we  wished,  to  regard 
him  as  belonging  to  the  genus  novelist  in  the 
theatre  ;  for,  when  he  came  to  enter  it,  he  found 
himself  to  be  perfectly  at  home. 

There  is  no  part  of  the  theatre's  art  which  is 
more  frequently  forgone  by  the  novelist  in  the 
theatre  than  what  we  may  speak  of  as  its  visual 
possibilities — the  things  that  are  apart  from 
speech,  either  subserving  its  effectiveness  or 
possessing,  entirely  on  their  own  account,  an 
effectiveness  of  mere  physical  disposition ;  and 
there  is  no  part  of  the  theatre's  art  which,  by 
Barrie,  is  more  surely  seized.  The  novelist  in 
the  theatre  will  place  the  whole  burden  upon 
dialogue,  a  burden  that  dialogue  cannot  bear  ;  the 
dramatist  is  able  so  to  dispose  his  materials  that 
a  movement  or  circumstance  may  be  more  in- 
forming, a  silence  more  eloquent.  Who  else  of  the 
theatre's  workers  has  conceived  a  "  silent  part  " 
so  intimately  exciting  as  that  of  Miss  Tinker  Bell 
in  the  Christmas  play  ? 

Now  there  is  a  kind  of  wit  of  situation  which 
is  not  the  verbal  wit  which  arises  out  of  events  so 
disposed,  but  is  the  actual  joyful  perfection  of 
120 


J.  M.  BARRIE 

the  disposed  spectacle — as  in  the  appearance  of 
the  mourning  Ernest  at  the  garden  door  in  the 
comedy  of  Wilde.  There  is  not  a  great  deal  of 
verbal  wit  in  the  comedies  of  J.  M.  Barrie,  but 
there  is  a  very  great  deal  of  what  we  have  called 
the  wit  of  situation.  This  dramatist,  we  feel, 
finding  himself  at  large  among  the  theatre's 
possibilities,  made  up  his  mind  to  have  a  very 
good  time  with  all  of  them  ;  but  his  love  for  them 
is  not  the  amateur's  love,  like  Stevenson's,  nor 
the  undiscriminating  revelry  of  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw, 
who,  when  he  broke  into  the  theatre,  left  his 
faculty  of  detachment  outside.  Stevenson,  fresh 
from  the  nursery  excitements  of  a  theatre  in  plain 
and  coloured  cardboard,  never  could  conceal  his 
joy  in  a  "  practicable  window,"  and  all  the  ro- 
mantic machinery  of  the  stage  ;  but  Stevenson 
did  once  strike  out  a  scene  that  is  a  perfect  example 
of  the  wit  of  situation.  The  scene  is  that  in  which 
he  made  blind  Pew  face  the  sleep-walking  Admiral 
and  take  him  for  a  seeing  man  in  a  dark  room 
until  he  himself,  groping  with  his  hand  to  find  the 
door,  burned  it  in  the  flame  of  the  candle.  That 
is  a  scene  which  was  tremendously  exciting  without 
a  word  spoken,  and  we  may  imagine  that  it  is  a 
scene  which  Barrie  would  like  very  much  to  have 
devised.  But  one  such  scene  does  not  make  a 
play,  and  that  is  why  Barrie  is  a  dramatist  while 
Stevenson  was,  for  the  most  part,  a  novelist  en- 
joying himself  in  the  theatre.     Barrie   has  done 

121 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

scenes  nearly  as  good  as  that — the  creeping  back 
of  all  the  persons  to  the  smell  of  the  butler's  pot 
at  the  end  of  the  second  act  of  The  Admirable 
Crichton,  for  example  ;  but  they  have  been  scenes 
in  comedies  that  from  first  to  last  have  been  neatly 
and  delightfully  executed.  The  danger  of  a  too 
great  reliance  upon  spectacular  exhibition  is  best 
illustrated  to-day,  perhaps,  in  the  plays  of  Mr. 
Charles  McEvoy,  who  exhausts  himself  by  throwing 
something  very  remarkable  upon  the  stage  to 
which  the  play  that  follows  is  but  anticlimax,  in 
so  far  as  it  can  be  called  a  play  at  all.  Spectacular 
exhibition  for  its  own  sake  is  never  wit  of  situation, 
for  this  is  achieved  only  when  the  most  economical 
and  delightful  means  are  hit  upon  for  the  play's 
total  illumination. 

That  Barrie  is  all  awake  to  what  we  have  termed 
the  theatre's  visual  possibilities  we  have  only  to 
remember  one  of  half  a  dozen  traits  to  be  confident ; 
his  love,  for  example,  of  differing  levels  is  very 
much  his  own.  There  are  the  cradles  on  the  wall 
in  Little  Mary,  the  spiral  staircase  in  What  Every 
Women  Knows,  in  Old  Friends  the  stairs  down 
which  the  white  figure  of  Carry  creeps — things  that 
sometimes  are  nice  on  their  own  account,  some- 
times valuable  to  the  dramatic  purpose  ;  and  then 
in  Peter  Pan,  where  all  these  things  that  the  dra- 
matist thinks  nice,  and  we  think  nice  too,  have  their 
apotheosis,  there  is  the  spectacle  of  the  redskins 
camped  above,  and  below,  the  home  under  the  ground. 
122 


J.  M.  BARRIE 

In  the  first  of  the  plays  which  call  here  for  our 
serious  regard  we  shall  not  be  surprised  to  find  that 
Barrie  is  telling  over  again  the  story  of  Sir  Arthur 
Pinero's  "  Profligate  "  ;  but  he  tells  it  neither  in 
the  manner  of  the  novelist  nor  of  the  novelettist 
in  the  theatre.  There  are  many  things  in  The 
Wedding  Guest  that  are  quite  truly  Barrie's  :  the 
rising  of  the  curtain  on  the  jolly  little  rehearsal 
of  how  to  be  married,  with  the  assistance  of 
Meikle  the  butler  ;  the  game  of  draughts  with  the 
minister,  in  the  fourth  act,  in  which  again  the 
butler  plays  a  part ;  but  while  these  are  incidentals 
of  character,  the  principal  point  in  the  story's 
telling  is  also  Barrie's  own.  There  is  the  bowl  of 
wedding  rice,  it  will  be  remembered,  that  has  been 
left,  quite  unobtrusively  and  naturally,  to  stand 
in  the  drawing-room.  Margaret,  when  things 
are  bad,  she  having  denounced  her  husband  for  a 
profligate  and  returned  to  her  father's  home, 
listlessly  dips  her  hand  into  this  and  lets  the  rice 
fall  through  her  fingers.  And  later,  at  the  very 
end,  when  the  last  word  is  spoken,  and  still  we  do 
not  know  just  how  the  play  is  leaving  us,  the 
second  woman,  half  cynically  yet  with  a  generous 
impulse,  takes  up  two  handfuls  of  the  rice  and 
flings  them  after  the  reconciled  pair  through  the 
window,  in  token  of  their  happiness,  and  hers. 
That  is  enough,  without  any  tedious  speeches  of 
termination  ;  it  is  the  way  of  the  good  dramatist. 
And,  for  a  slighter  thing,  there  is  the  very  good 

123 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

moment  in  the  comedy  of  equality,  when  the 
returned  voyagers  are  once  more  in  the  drawing- 
room,  and  Ernest  perpetrates  his  first  epigram  at 
the  instant  that  Crichton,  a  butler  again,  happens 
to  have  his  hand  on  the  ship's  bucket  where  it 
stands  for  exhibition  of  the  travellers'  prowess. 
Ernest's  look  of  apprehension  over  his  shoulder 
is  all  that  we  need  for  our  recollection  to  become 
lively  of  what  the  penalty  for  epigrams  was  on  the 
island.  Ernest's  look  is  all  that  we  are  given,  and 
the  moment  is  a  delightful  one,  quite  innocent  of 
the  insistence  with  which  a  less  good  dramatist 
would  have  spoiled  it.  Indeed,  we  may  say  at 
once  that  Barrie's  workmanship  is  never  anything 
else  but  neat  and  delightful. 

The  Hon.  Ernest  Woolley  has  this  particular 
importance  in  the  comedy  of  J.  M.  Barrie,  that  he 
is  the  symbol  of  its  reaction  from  the  drama  of 
verbal  decoration  which,  in  its  superficial  aspect, 
was  Wilde's.  Wilde's  drama  was  something  more, 
but  it  was  sufficiently  that  to  make  discipleship 
dangerous  ;  and  from  a  long  course  of  discipleship 
to  the  drama  of  verbal  decoration  Barrie  has  saved 
us  more  than  any  man.  Thus,  it  is  very  good  satire 
that  no  one  in  the  household  should  understand 
Ernest's  best  paradox,  and  that  at  last  the  sugges- 
tion should  be  forthcoming  that,  of  course,  what 
he  intended  to  say  was  the  opposite.  But  if 
Barrie  has  preserved  the  English  theatre  from  one 
kind  of  decadence,  he  has  done  his  best  also  to 
124 


J.  M.  BARRIE 

shake  it  out  of  the  decadence  in  which  he  found  it 
so  self-satisfied.  When  he  has  told  the  theatre's 
stories,  as  in  the  play  about  a  profligate,  he  has 
told  them  better.  Quality  Street  is  a  more  self- 
respecting  supply  to  meet  the  dramatic  demand 
than  "  Sweet  Lavender."  And  in  place  of  the 
little  pieces  about  Hester's  baby  or  an  organist 
who  took  the  pledge  that  were  held  "  good 
enough  "  to  raise  a  curtain,  a  quite  definite  drama 
in  the  one- act  form  has  come  from  J.  M.  Barrie. 

But  when  he  has  told  the  theatre's  stories  with 
a  twist,  he  has,  one  feels,  been  the  more  Barrie. 
Nothing  could  be  better  satire  of  the  theatre  which 
is  for  ever  given  up  to  the  pursuit  of  some  matri- 
monial intrigue  than  the  play  which,  for  two  acts 
itself  a  play  of  matrimonial  intrigue,  has  for  its 
final  curtain  warning  an  "  especially  loud  click." 
How  many  constant  playgoers,  Amy  Greys  every 
one  of  them,  sat  through  Alice- Sit-by -the- Fire  in 
the  belief  that  it  was  the  real  article,  rather  better 
done ;  until  that  final  fall  of  the  curtain  shocked 
them,  perhaps,  into  a  reconsideration  of  the 
dramatic  values  on  their  way  home  ?  The  only 
objection  that  could  be  brought  against  Alice- Sit- 
by -the- Fire  is  that,  for  a  play  that  ends  in  a  joke, 
it  is  beaten  a  little  long  and  thin  ;  really,  the  only 
terms  upon  which  the  second  act  is  wholly  enter- 
taining would  be  that  the  play  actually  was  the 
play  of  matrimonial  intrigue  for  which  the  Amy 
Greys  were  taking  it.     For  this  reason  we  may 

125 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

fancy  the  satire  against  the  theatre  of  the  theatre 
men  more  directly  acceptable  in  the  little  one-act 
Shce  of  Life,  in  which  the  heroine,  for  lack  of  the 
raisonneur  that  is  denied  to  a  drama  become  self- 
consciously realistic,  confides  the  facts  of  her  birth 
and  parentage  into  the  telephone,  and,  having 
thrown  away  what  Mr.  Henry  Arthur  Jones  once 
termed  "that  piercing  spyglass"  the  sohloquy, 
has  recourse  to  the  sympathetic  ear  of  a  china  dog 
lifted  down  from  the  mantelpiece. 

Barrie's  theatre,  then,  is  a  place  that  is  much 
too  good  to  be  stupid  in,  and  much  too  good  to 
be  stupid-clever  in— it  is,  like  the  House  They 
Built  for  Wendy,  so  good  just  to  be  in.  In  such 
a  jolly  place,  with  so  many  jolly  things  to  be  done, 
the  last  thing  one  would  wish  to  indulge  in  is  the 
drama  of  dialectics— the  rhetorical  dialectics  of  the 
Actor-Manager  on  the  one  hand,  or  the  cut-and- 
come-again  dialectics  of  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw  on  the 
other.  As  for  fireworks,  when  one  may  have  them 
green  and  red  and  yellow  and  white,  like  the 
fairies  in  the  House  in  the  Trees,  who  would  have 
them  verbal  ? 

With  the  drama  too,  which  has,  we  would  say, 
put  the  conviction  of  reality  in  the  place  of  effective- 
ness of  construction  and  given  the  lie  direct  to  the 
strategy  and  tactics  of  the  military  men,  the  drama 
of  J.  M.  Barrie  has  nothing  to  do.  The  Twelve- 
Pound  Look  would  never  have  happened  ;  Kate 
would  have  been  put  out  of  the  house  by  the  two 


126 


J.  M.  BARRIE 

lackeys  of  the  irate  little  Knight  long  before  his 
new  wife  had  opportunity  to  find  the  look  infectious. 
But  for  the  dramatist's  wholly  delightful  purposes, 
for  Sir  Harry  Sims  to  echo  Moli^re's  bourgeois 
gentleman — "  Ho,  my  two  lackeys  !  " — would  not 
do  at  all.  A  half- hour's  traffic  of  the  stage  is  the 
end  in  view,  and,  granting  this,  we  may  be  sure 
that  the  sum  of  it  will  be  neat  and  quick  and  beauti- 
fully rounded.  Above  all,  the  theatre  will  be  used 
— we  shall  smile  at  the  rehearsal  of  Sir  Harry's 
"  very  beautiful  ceremony,"  we  shall  be  left  in 
surprised  admiration  by  the  curtain's  artfully  con- 
sidered fall.  If  the  play  is  by  Barrie,  the  theatre 
will  be  used,  and  used  well ;  but  we  shall  not 
forget  it  is  the  theatre.  His  is  not  the  art  that 
conceals  art,  and  why  should  it  ? — we  have  not 
had  so  much  art  in  the  theatre  for  a  century,  that 
we  may  grieve  now  that  it  is  displayed  with  a 
little  delighted  consciousness.  Rosalind,  the  story 
of  an  actress  who  was  both  herself  and  her  mother, 
the  one  in  public  life  and  the  other  in  private, 
might  be  a  truer  play  if  she  were  not  both  within 
a  stage  ten  minutes  ;  but  who  are  we  that  we 
should  deny  to  ourselves,  or  to  the  author,  the 
wholesome  pleasure  in  the  tour  de  force  ?  The 
comedy  of  J.  M.  Barrie  is  an  artificial  comedy  that 
is  disarmingly  natural,  that  is  all. 

Allied  to  this  frank  and  engaging  unreality  of 
time  and  place  is  a  care  for  character  that  is  always 
the  care  of  the  proud  parent  for  his  children,  rather 

127 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

than  the  fine  careless  care  (if  one  may  say  so) 
that  gives  to  each  person  his  or  her  strong  life, 
and  leaves  them  there  to  stand  on  their  own  feet. 
They  are  true  people,  these  figures  of  the  Barrie 
comedy,  true  because  their  author  loves  them ; 
Mr.  Crichton,  Meikle,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Darling,  John 
Napoleon  and  Michael  and  Cosmo  and  Amy, 
Colonel  and  Mrs.  Grey,  Nurse  and  Nana,  the 
cricketing  clergyman,  the  Wylies,  the  Hon.  Ernest, 
Mr.  Fairbairn  and  the  Earl  of  Loam,  and  all  the 
line  of  "  little  mothers " — Jenny  Geddes  and 
Moira  and  Wendy  and  Richardson  and  Maggie 
Shand  ;  but  when  their  author  does  not  love  them, 
rather  a  serious  thing  happens.  It  happens  to 
Lady  Sybil  Lazenby,  who  has  the  temerity  in  the 
Parliamentary  comedy  to  come  between  the  little 
mother  and  her  child,  John  Shand.  It  is  what 
happens  to  Ricky  Ticky  Tavy  in  the  play  by  Mr. 
Shaw  ;  but  there  it  shocks  one  less,  because  you 
cannot  play  the  game  of  ninepins  without  a  ninepin 
or  two  going  down  into  the  dirt.  But  Barrie's  is  not 
the  comedy  of  ninepins,  and  we  are  sorry  for  Lady 
Sybil  Lazenby.  She  is  so  heartlessly  bowled  over, 
in  order  that  the  firm  stand  of  Maggie  may  shine 
more  admirable.  It  is  likely  that  you  cannot  be 
quite  completely  fair  to  all  your  persons  unless  you 
are  at  least  as  fair  to  them  as  Life  is — that  is  to  say, 
unless  you  grant  to  them  the  right  to  stand  on 
their  own  feet ;  and  this  the  comedy  of  Barrie 
scarcely  does.  The  very  neatness  of  design  in 
128 


J.  M.  BARRIE 

which  this  comedy  never  disappoints  us  is  the 
negation  of  its  persons'  right  to  step  outside.  But 
from  the  really  strongest  comedy,  which  of  the 
persons  may  not  surprisingly  step  out,  and  go 
walking,  it  seems,  his  own  road  through  the  world  ? 

If  the  comedy  of  Barrie  is  not  the  really  strongest 
comedy,  it  is  a  comedy  which  is  perfectly  ex- 
pressive and  worthy  of  the  contemporary  theatre, 
and  a  comedy  of  which  one  example  at  least — 
The  Admirable  Crichton — is  quite  certain  to  be 
keeping  its  theatre  open  in  a  hundred  years.  Of 
how  many  plays  of  our  generation  are  we  able 
with  an  equal  confidence  to  say  that  ?  In  render- 
ing our  statement  of  account  between  J.  M.  Barrie 
and  the  theatre  of  his  day,  we  may  find  it  to  be 
over-simplified,  but  we  shall  not  find  it  to  be  false. 
"  No,"  wrote  Stevenson,  late  in  his  life,  "  I  will  not 
write  a  play  for  Irving,  nor  for  the  devil.  Can  you 
not  see  that  the  work  oi  falsification  which  a  play 
demands  is  of  all  tasks  the  most  ungrateful  ?  " 
That  was  the  apology  petulant,  from  the  artist  who 
has  failed  of  full  success  in  a  medium  that  was  not 
his  own.  The  theatre  did  not  demand  falsification 
from  Stevenson  :  that  was  what  he  gave  it.  In 
going  in  memory  back  over  the  theatre  of  Barrie, 
there  is  much  that  is  simplified,  but  nothing,  one 
thinks,  that  is  false. 

Not  to  count  the  things  that  took  their  true 
origin  in  the  printed  page — Walker,  London,  and 
The    Little    Minister — there    was     that     earliest 

I  129 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

comedy  of  which,  one  has  to  confess,  one  remem- 
bers only  a  hayfield,  a  professor,  a  pretty  secretary, 
and  the  Scottish  tongue.  There  was  the  story 
of  the  wild  oats  the  young  man  had  sown, 
to  find  them  thrusting  their  ears  through  the 
very  seams  of  the  floor — as  Sir  Arthur  Pinero 
would  say ;  but  Sir  Arthur  Pinero,  in  writing  this 
play,  had  written  it  differently.  There  was  the 
''Uncomfortable  Play,"  which,  for  all  the  humour 
of  its  incidentals,  proved,  Uke  the  satirical 
comedy  we  have  glanced  at,  to  be  somewhat 
too  thin- spread  for  the  magnitude  of  the  little 
joke  when  we  came  to  it.  And  what  of  that 
other  little  joke,  of  what  really  happened  to  Adam, 
which  constituted  the  sum  of  what  is  known  to 
every  woman  and  to  this  dramatist,  but  not  to  any 
other  man  at  all  ?  Well,  there  is  this  to  be  said, 
that  when  the  little  joke  was  retrenched  in  repre- 
sentation, at  a  later  appearance  of  the  comedy, 
the  comedy  was  found  to  be  a  good  and,  in  essen- 
tials, a  true  comedy  without  it ;  and  that  is  more 
than  can  be  said  of  the  kind  of  play  which  is  less  to 
its  author  than  the  epigram  which  brings  down  its 
curtain.  There  have  been  effects  of  dramatic 
contrast  (such  as  that  between  Maggie  and  Lady 
Sybil)  which  have  shared  with  effects  of  dramatic 
irony  (such  as  that  a  serene  sky  should  shine  down 
upon  the  sad  little  daughter  of  the  man  who  con- 
quered his  drunkenness  too  late)  a  simplification 
resulting  almost  in  naivete.  Together  with  the 
130 


J.  M.  BARRIE 

things  to  which  we  have  not  quite  given  our 
credence,  but  which  have  not  mattered  at  all  (such 
as  the  time-plot  of  the  one-act  plays),  there  have 
been  things  to  which  we  have  not  quite  given  our 
credence  either,  and  which  have  mattered  more 
(such  as  the  symptoms  under  catalepsy  of  the 
wedding-guest).  The  Wedding  GuesVs  solvent,  too, 
may  seem  to  us  in  the  circumstances  to  have  been 
over-simplified  ;  but  since  it  is  really  the  solvent 
of  all  the  plays — what  the  gentle  pirate  Smee 
desiderated  as  a  Mother's  Love — it  is  nice  to  think 
we  need  not  name  it  false. 

Simplification,  one  fancies,  may  be  left  to  stand 
on  the  one  side  of  the  account,  as  it  must  certainly 
stand  on  the  other.  The  success  of  J.  M.  Barrie 
in  the  theatre  is  the  success  of  simplification. 
Says  Jenny  Geddes,  aged  eleven,  of  the  baby  that 
was  the  profligate's,  "  Sometimes  she  sleeps  and 
sometimes  she  wakes  up — I  never  see  such  a 
baby  !  "  But  we  have,  in  the  world  outside,  seen 
just  such  a  baby  more  than  once,  and  our  pleasure 
is  the  pleasure  of  recognition.  The  theatre  of 
J.  M.  Barrie  is  full  of  such  pleasure.  In  Peter  Pan 
we  recognize  our  nursery  ;  children  don't,  they 
would  be  bored  if  they  did — that  is  the  art  of  the 
thing.  In  the  "  fantasy  "  about  a  desert  island, 
we  recognize  something  that  we  know  to  be  so 
simply  and  profoundly  true  that  from  any  other 
than  Barrie  we  should,  as  the  children  their 
nursery,  refuse  to  receive  it.     In  Pantaloon  we  even 

131 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

recognize  the  ancient  family  in  mufti,  and  know 
that  in  mufti  they  would  be  just  like  that,  with 
Harlequin  and  Columbine,  of  course,  quite  speech- 
less, and  a  sausage- shop  over  the  way.  It  is  a 
delightful  power,  this  power  to  convince  us  that 
our  interests  and  observations  are  identical.  Says 
Jenny  Geddes,  aged  eleven,  to  the  baby  that  was 
the  profligate's,  "  This  is  a  chair,  and  that  there's 
the  window,  and  the  thing  outside  the  window 
is  the  world."  The  thing  outside  the  window, 
in  the  theatre  of  Sir  James  Barrie,  really  is  the 
world,  and  that  is  a  great  deal  to  be  thankful  for. 
The  theatre  of  the  theatre  men  had  the  world  out- 
side, no  doubt,  but  its  only  window  had  the  mis- 
fortune to  be  merely  a  "  practicable  "  window,  which 
is  as  much  as  to  say  it  was  quite  windowless. 


132 


BERNARD  SHAW 

MR.  BERNARD  SHAW  confronts  his  age 
not  so  much  a  dramatist  as  a  writer 
possessed  of  a  philosophy  and  of  a 
trick  of  the  stage,  who  has  employed  the  one  to 
expound  the  other.  He  has  said  so  himself  on 
more  than  one  occasion.  At  the  outset  of  his 
career  as  a  dramatist  he  defined  the  impulse  which 
moved  him  as  the  "  philosopher's  impatience  to 
get  to  realities,"  and  he  went  on  to  state,  "  I  fight 
the  theatre,  not  with  pamphlets  and  sermons  and 
treatises,  but  with  plays."  Now  the  dramatist  by 
vocation  does  not  fight  the  theatre  at  all.  It  is 
always  a  pity  for  the  artist  to  quarrel  with  his 
medium,  for  if  the  artist  wins,  he  will  despise  the 
medium,  and  if  the  medium  wins,  he  will  still 
despise  it.  The  most  curious  thing  about  Mr. 
Bernard  Shaw  is  that  as  long  as  he  wrote  about 
the  theatre  he  always  called  it  a  church,  with 
reverence,  but  the  moment  he  began  to  practise 
regularly  in  it  he  treated  it  as  though  it  really 
were  a  church — that  is  to  say,  without  reverence. 

133 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

In  making  the  theatre  the  vehicle  for  a  philosophy 
of  life,  instead  of  for  a  load  of  banalities,  it  is  true 
that  by  implication  he  has  dignified  it ;    but  the 
philosopher  has  put  all    his  emphasis  upon   the 
evolution  of  a  better  kind  of  life,  and  the  play- 
wright has  done  nothing  in  particular  to  assist  in 
the  evolution  of  a  better  kind  of  theatre.     "  I  tell 
you,"   says   Don   Juan   in   Man   and  Superman, 
"  that  as  long  as  I  can  conceive  something  better 
than  myself  I  cannot  be  easy  unless  I  am  striving 
to  bring  it  into  existence  or  clearing  the  way  for 
it."     But  Mr.   Bernard  Shaw's  attitude  towards 
the  theatre  has  not  so  much  been  one  of  striving 
and  clarifying  as  of  a  rather  scornful  acceptance 
of    the    "  hackneyed    stage   framework  "    of    the 
theatre  as  he  found  it.     "I  have  always  cast  my 
plays,"  he  has  left  it  on  record  in  one  of  his  pre- 
faces, "  in  the  ordinary  practical  comedy  form  in 
use   at   all    theatres;     and   far   from   taking   an 
unsympathetic  view  of  the  popular  preference  for 
fun,  fashionable  dresses,  a  little  music,  and  even 
an  exhibition  of  eating  and  drinking  by  people 
with  an  expensive  air,  attended  by  an  if-possible- 
comic  waiter,   I  was  more  than  willing  to  show 
that   the   drama   can   humanize   these   things   as 
easily    as    they,    in    undramatic    hands,    can    de- 
humanize the  drama. ' '    Mr.  Shaw  has  gone  further  : 
in  another  preface   he    has  stated  quite  explicitly 
his  belief  that  "  It  is  the  philosophy,  the  outlook 
on  life,  that  changes,  not  the  craft  of  the  plav- 
134  ^ 


BERNARD  SHAW 

„M"    We    may    well    make    this    antinomy 
S;ten  tlJI  pMoTopher  and  the  playwright  the 

n^'rt:  ;rr^rc-that  m.  sha^^ 

Jt%t;s  are  L  plays  that  ear^^^^^^^^^^^ 
the  least  o{  his  philosophy,  but  fat  ca^y 
successMly.    What  are  Mr.  Shaw  ^  Pl^y^^   ^J^_ 
they  are  twenty-three  in  number,  ^nd  ^hey  com 

IS'  a  "stage  P'ay, -.."-^  J^:'.  ,t 
"adventure,"  a  "history,  '  ''./'f  Se'^r' ^tudy  •' 
cussion" a" conversation," a" debate,    a    study, 

fTr^"  Dlavs  "  together  with  five  compositions 
^"v.  Vh  sTnee    hS  resourceful  author  has  not  been 
""wt;  name  them  we  must  include  in  the  category 
:^  ^l^^neTby  sHames  Barrie's  heroine  as  darlmg 
SlHlics  Lt  iust  don't  know  wh^^J^ey  a« 
In  his  twenty-three  plays  (up  to  *«  P™;s  to 
Shaw  has  surveyed  '"^"^ind  from  the  Ba&ans  to 
*!,«  Var  West  he  has  associated  on  laminar  wrm» 
^thNapokon  after  Lodi,  with  Burgoyne  before 
I«a   w"h  Caesar  in  Egypt,  with  Shakespeare 
at  Hampton  Court,   and  he  has  personal  y  con- 
ducted a  party  of  tourists  from  Richmond  to  Hell 
And  yet  Mr.  Shaw  has  done  nothing  in  part.cute 
to   extend   the   confines   of   the  English   drama 
Wherever  he  has  been,  he  has  not  been  unmmdful 
!^  the  "  popular  preference"  for  a  word  or  two 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

about  the  English;    so  that  Csesar  has  a  British 
Islander  for  a  secretary,   Napoleon  explains  the 
i^nghsh  to  us,  General  Burgoyne  is  satiric  at  the 
expense  of  the  War  Office,  Major  Petkoff  learns  of 
the  new  habit  of  washing  from  an  Englishman  at 
Phihppopolis,  and  England  is  publicly  commended 
by  the  Devil  as  the  country  in  which  he  has  the 
largest  following.      At  once  a  link  with    Shake- 
speare who,  m  setting  a  tragedy  in  the  island  of 
Cyprus,  would  not    suffer  the  occasion  to  go    by 
without   informing   the   English   that   they   were 
great  drinkers.     Nor  is  it  the  only  link  ;    for  Mr 
t»haw,   m  taking  over  the  ordinary  stage  frame- 
work that  was  "practical,"  took  over  the  form 
that,  poorly  used  as  it  was  by  some  of  his  immediate 
predecessors,   had  yet  been  good  enough  for  the 
best  English  dramatists  from  Shakespeare  to  Wilde 
to  put  their  plays   in.     Shakespeare,  amongst  his 
lesser  lapses,  falls  occasionally  into  a  fault  in  comic 
writing  which  we  may  call  the  verbal  anticlimax. 
Here  is  an  instance  of  it : 

Maria.     Many,  sir,  sometimes  he  is  a  kind  of  Puritan 
^^SiR  Andrew.     O  !  if  I  thought  that,  I  'd  beat  him  hk;  a 

Sir  Toby.  What,  for  being  a  Puritan  ? 
This  is  a  fault  in  dramatic  writing  only  because, 
in  the  theatre,  we  laugh  at  the  second  line,  and 
have  no  need  of  the  third  ;  indeed,  we  never  hear 
It  because  of  the  laughter.  It  is  thus  a  fault  in 
dramatic  economy  ;    and  it  is  a  fault  also,  of  a 


BERNARD  SHAW 

graver  kind,  because  it  proceeds  from  an  under- 
estimation of  the  audience's  intelligence.  The  best 
comic  writing  is  always  keying  our  intelligence  up  ; 
it  gives  us  great  credit ;  poorer  comic  writing  has 
often  this  air  of  descending  to  our  level,  and  making 
everything  even  and  acceptable  for  us.  Now  we 
shall  find  that  Mr.  Shaw  is  often  guilty  of  this 
fault  of  under- estimating  his  audience.  We  may 
take  at  random  an  instance  from  one  of  his  best 
plays  ;  the  S\viss  soldier  of  fortune  is  describing  to 
the  romantic  young  lady  a  cavalry  charge  as  it 
really  is  : 

Raina.    Yes,  first  One  ! — ^the  bravest  of  the  brave  ! 

Man.  Hm  I  You  should  see  the  poor  devil  pulling  at 
his  horse. 

Raina.     Why  should  he  pull  at  his  horse  ? 

Man.  IVs  running  away  with  him,  of  course  :  do  you 
suppose  the  fellow  wants  to  get  there  before  the  others  and  be 
killed? 

We  have  laughed  at  the  second  line,  and  we  do 
not  laugh  again  at  the  fourth  ;  but  that  is  not 
merely  the  waste  of  two  lines  ;  it  is  the  achieve- 
ment of  verbal  anticlimax,  and  it  is  in  the  nature 
of  anticlimax  to  be  retrospective  in  its  influence. 
It  will  be  enough  to  establish  kinship,  on  this 
lower  plane,  with  both  Shakespeare  and  Wilde,  if 
we  note  in  passing  Mr.  Shaw's  unfailing  pleasure 
in  the  confusion  of  a  name  ;  it  amuses  him  as 
much  that  Mr.  Redbrook  should  be  addressed 
as  Mr.  Kidbrook  or  Ftatateeta  as  Teetatota  as  it 

137 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

amused  Wilde  to  name  a  Member  of  Parliament 
Kelvil  in  order  to  call  him  Kettle,  or  as  it  amused 
Shakespeare  to  give  a  fellow  the  name  of  Elbow  and 
then  to  make  puns  upon  it.  If  Mr.  Shaw  has  a 
person  who  is  a  professor  of  Greek,  he  cannot  resist 
the  humour  of  addressing  him  as  "  Euripides  "  ; 
but  we  shall  have  other  occasions  in  the  course  of 
this  chapter  to  note  the  undergraduate  quality  that 
is  sometimes  apparent  in  Mr.  Shaw's  humour. 

The  best  plays  of  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw  are  Arms 
and  the  Man,  You  Never  Can  Tell,  Candida,  The 
DeviVs  Disciple,  Captain  Brasshound's  Conversion, 
and  The  Shewing-Up  of  Blanco  Posnet. 

Arms  and  the  Man  is  a  quite  perfect  comedy. 
How  good  a  framework  for  comedy  the  "  practical  " 
stage  framework  was  for  a  writer  who  came  to  the 
theatre  with  Mr.  Shaw's  intellectual  vivacity  may 
be  seen  in  this,  one  of  the  earliest  of  his  plays. 
Its  opening  is  delightfully  exciting;  before  the 
curtain  is  up  two  minutes  we  get  our  first  surprise  ; 
nobody  but  a  dramatist  of  the  very  first  quality 
could  have  maintained  so  successfully  the  tension 
of  that  admirable  first  act.  The  second  act  is 
even  better;  there  are  moments  in  it  that  are 
triumphs  of  comic  preparation.  Who  is  there  that 
does  not  cherish  the  recollection  of  the  line, 
"  Captain  Bluntschli :  I  am  very  glad  to  see  you  \ 
but  you  must  leave  this  house  at  once,"  and  of 
the  subsequent  dilemma  of  the  Captain's  carpet- 
bag ?  The  third  act  is  very  nearly  as  good  • 
138 


BERNARD  SHAW 

there  is  a  very  rich  sort  of  drollery  in  the  Captain's 
four  thousand  table-cloths  ;  and  it  is  beautiful  to 
see  how,  the  moment  the  imbroglio  is  completely 
untangled,  the  play  is  at  an  end.  There  is  nothing 
that  the  author  of  Arms  and  the  Man  might  not 
have  done  within  the  theatre's  "  ordinary  frame- 
work." He  proceeded  to  do  something  more  in 
another  almost  perfect  comedy.  You  Never  Can 
Tell.  This  is  less  a  comedy  of  situation  and  more 
a  comedy  of  character :  of  the  character  of 
William  the  waiter.  William  is  more  than  the 
if-possible-comic  waiter :  he  is  both  comic  and 
possible — a  creation.  The  twins,  too,  are  comic 
creations.  Nor  is  the  play  without  its  very  good 
surprise  :  "  No,  sir  :  the  other  bar — your  pro- 
fession, sir  "  ;  and  its  triumphs  of  comic  prepara- 
tion, as  when  Dolly  echoes  the  K.C.  and  tells  him 
he  may  think  he  is  not  going  to  bully  her  but  he 
is,  and  when  that  unhappy  phrase  of  Gloria's 
about  the  grass  growing  and  the  water  running  is 
brought  home  to  the  man  in  Madeira.  Again,  how 
beautifully  the  play  ends  !  But  now  let  us  ask 
ourselves  two  questions.  When  Arms  and  the  Man 
is  played  before  us,  are  we  conscious  of  anything 
remarkable  in  the  simplification  by  which  people 
of  differing  nationalities  overcome  the  difficulty  of 
communication  ?  I  do  not  think  we  are ;  the 
play  carries  us  with  it.  When  You  Never  Can  Tell 
is  played,  are  we  conscious  of  the  surprising  sim- 
plification of  circumstances  by  which  the  Clandon 

189 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

family  finds  a  father  ?  I  think  we  are,  just  a 
little ;  but  not  enough  in  this  particular  comedy 
to  matter.  Now  let  us  turn  to  Candida.  Candida 
is  not  comic — except  by  excrescence.  Candida  is 
a  comedy  of  character.  Candida  herself  is  a 
picture  of  Everywoman,  a  very  interesting  and 
even  beautiful  picture ;  the  clergyman,  her 
husband,  is  a  good,  straight  piece  of  characteriza- 
tion ;  the  poet — well,  he  is  Mr.  Shaw's  notion  of 
a  poet,  and  we  are  interested.  There  is  a  discussion 
in  the  last  act  which  is  a  necessary  discussion,  and 
when  the  appropriation  of  Candida  is  made  clear, 
the  discussion  is  over  and  the  play  ends.  It  is  a 
"  well-made  play."  But  what  is  involved  in  its 
conformity  to  type  ?  Burgess  ;  and  all  that  stuff 
about  everybody  in  the  house  being  mad  ;  and  the 
scene  of  Prossy  and  Lexy  drunk  ;  and  what  are 
all  these  things  but  the  time-honoured  comic  relief 
that  we  may  find  in  a  whole  generation  of  Mr. 
Shaw's  predecessors  ? 

We  have  so  far  discovered  nothing  more  for 
ourselves  than  Mr.  Shaw,  always  anxious  to  be 
helpful,  has  himself  discovered  for  us,  although, 
to  be  sure,  I  do  not  think  Mr.  Shaw  ever  did 
himself  the  justice  of  admitting  how  good  those 
early  comedies  of  his  were.  In  a  quite  recent 
preface,  that  to  the  latest  edition  of  Man  and 
Superman,  Mr.  Shaw  says  :  "I  have  not  been 
sparing  of  such  lighter  qualities  as  I  could  endow 
the  book  with  for  the  sake  of  those  who  ask  nothing 
140 


BERNARD  SHAW 

from  a  play  but  an  agreeable  pastime."  And  now, 
having  secured  that  admission,  and  pausing  only 
to  note  that  while  in  Man  and  Superman  Mr. 
Shaw's  philosophy  finds  its  fullest  expression,  the 
stage  framework  of  that  comedy  is  of  the  poorest 
(a  contention  we  may  proceed  to  illustrate  in  a 
moment),  let  us  go  back  to  Candida. 

If  Burgess  is  of  no  particular  value  as  a  likely 
father  for  Candida,  there  is  one  purpose  at  least 
that  he  serves,  and  that  is  to  make  (in  the  remark- 
able diction  which  he  favours)  the  undoubtedly 
true  remark,  "Hopinions  become  vurry  serious 
things  when  people  takes  to  hactin'  on  'em."  It 
mattered  very  little  that  Mr.  Shaw  should  profess 
a  cynical  carelessness  with  regard  to  stage  forms 
as  long  as  he  proceeded  to  write  quite  admirable 
comedies  within  them  ;  but  as  soon  as  he  began 
to  be  careless  in  writing  for  the  theatre,  that  was 
a  pity.  It  will  be  remembered  that  the  Rev. 
Mavor  Morell's  secretary,  and  all  the  Rev.  Mavor 
Morell's  secretaries,  suffered  from  what  Candida 
called  Prossy's  complaint.  "  She's  in  love  with 
you,  James :  that's  the  reason.  They're  all  in 
love  with  you.  And  you  are  in  love  with  preaching 
because  you  do  it  so  beautifully."  Now  it  was 
just  about  the  time  Mr.  Shaw  wrote  Candida  that  he 
began  to  suffer  from  G.B.S.'s  complaint.  It  was 
not  so  much  that  he  fell  in  love  with  preaching 
because  he  did  it  so  beautifully,  or  that  he  began 
to  "  hact  "  on  the  "  hopinion  "  he  had  held  when 

141 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

he  was  merely  a  harmless  dramatic  critic  that  the 
theatre  is  a  church.     No,  Mr.   Shaw  has  always 
been  in  love  with  preaching,  and  he  had  always 
preached   beautifully.     The  trouble   set   in   when 
Mr.    Shaw   no   longer   merely    put   up    with   the 
"  hackneyed  stage  framework,"  but  fell  positively 
in  love  with  it.     The  medium  won.     The  artist 
fell  in  love  with  all  the  stage  tricks  because  he  did 
them  so  beautifully.     For  the  line  of  least  resist- 
ance is  G.B.S.'s  complaint.     It  is  a  complaint  that 
has    something   in   common   with   the   desire    of 
schoolboys  to  "  show  off."     Mr.  Shaw  was  by  this 
time  master  of  all  the  stage  tricks,  he  was  a  better 
hand  at  them  than  any  other  man  of  his  genera- 
tion, and  he  liked  them  so  much  that  he  allowed 
them  to  master  him.     But  before  they  mastered 
him  he  wrote  two  more  plays  that   are   almost 
completely    free    from    G.B.S.'s    complaint.     The 
DevWs  Disciple  has  an  opening  inferior  only  to 
that  of  Arms  and  the  Man,   the  action  is  swift 
and  logical  to  the  end,  the  diabolonian  Dick  and 
the   minister    are    consistently    well-realized    and 
at  the  same    time  contain   much  of   Mr.   Shaw's 
characteristic  philosophy  and  foreshadow  more.    He 
called  it  a  "  melodrama,"  and  we  must  insist  upon 
regarding  it  with  the  most  perfect  seriousness  as 
one  of  the  best  of  Mr.  Shaw's  plays.     He  called 
Captain  Brassbound's  Conversion  an  "  adventure," 
but  the  adventurousness  in  it  is  not  so  remarkable 
as   the  excellence  of   the  characterization.     Lady 
142 


BERNARD  SHAW 

Cecily,  who  says  "  Howdyedo "  to  rascals  the 
world  over  and  finds  them  quite  nice,  is  the  truest 
and  most  engaging  portrait  of  a  woman  in  Mr. 
Shaw's  long  gallery.  His  real  hold  on  the  theatre 
has  never  been  better  exemplified  than  in  the 
little  scene  in  which  Lady  Cecily  outdoes  Captain 
Brassbound  while  helping  on  his  coat,  for  "  all 
men  look  foolish  when  they  are  feeling  for  their 
sleeves."  Felix  Drink  water,  the  hooligan,  must 
for  ever  be  memorable  if  only  for  his  effort  to  lift 
himself  out  of  the  "  sawdid  reeyellities  of  the 
Worterleoo  Rowd."  The  play  is  again  well- shaped, 
although  the  circumstance  by  which,  in  the  little 
seaport  of  Mogador,  the  eminent  judge  finds  at 
once  a  nephew  in  Captain  Brassbound,  a  former 
acquaintance  in  the  hooligan,  and  his  brother's  early 
friend  in  the  missionary,  may  be  held  to  go  as  far 
in  the  direction  of  conventional  simplification  as 
even  the  "  practical  comedy  form  "  does  well  to 
go.  Much  more  might  be  forgiven  to  the  play  for 
its  ending  with  Lady  Cecily's  words,  "  How 
glorious  !  how  glorious  !  And  what  an  escape  !  " 
— one  of  the  best  of  Mr.  Shaw's  endings  in  the 
days  before  he  allowed  himself  to  "  run  on." 

And  now,  if  we  wish  to  appreciate  the  ravages 
worked  by  G.B.S.'s  complaint,  we  have  only  to 
turn  from  either  of  these  plays  to  the  play  that 
immediately  followed  them.  Ccesar  and  Cleopatra 
is  very  clever,  very  prolix,  very  "  tricky,"  quite 
unactable  in  its  entirety  and,  a  surprising  thing, 

143 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

far  too  tiresome  to  be  read.  Everywhere  over  it 
is  that  destructive  air  of  too  great  ease.  A  play 
about  Juhus  Caesar  ? — Why,  certainly,  by  this  time 
Mr.  Shaw  could  write  you  a  play  about  anything. 
Custom  had  made  it  in  him  a  property  of  easiness, 
as  in  the  gravedigger  who  tossed  up  skulls.  Mr. 
Shaw  tossed  up  the  skull  of  Caesar,  and  knocked  it 
gaily  about  the  mazzard  with  his  sexton's  spade, 
under  cover  of  an  ad  hoc  historical  discovery  that 
Caesar  was  even  such  a  man  as  himself  ;  very  much 
as,  later  on,  he  justified  the  clowning  of  the  doctors 
with  the  proposition  that  "  life  does  not  cease  to 
be  funny  when  people  die  any  more  than  it  ceases 
to  be  serious  when  people  laugh."  Ccesar  and 
Cleopatra,  with  its  ill-considered  rough-and-tumble 
varied  with  a  superficial  air  of  profound  study,  is 
easily  the  poorest  of  Mr.  Shaw's  plays.  It  was 
born  a  victim  to  G.B.S.'s  complaint :  that  com- 
plaint which,  when  it  is  galloping,  leaves  us  no 
recourse  but  to  the  remark  Mr.  Shaw's  unknown 
Lady  had  to  make  to  Napoleon,  "  W-w-w-w-wh  ! 
do  stop  a  moment !  "  Let  us  look  a  little  deeper 
into  the  symptoms. 

The  line  of  least  resistance,  in  the  theatre,  leads 
the  artist  first  of  all  into  falseness  to  character. 
Perhaps,  if  the  dramatic  artist  stood  in  any  need 
of  a  motto,  we  might  give  him  the  words  of  Sir 
Thomas  Browne  :  "  Every  man  truly  lives  so  long 
as  he  acts  his  nature,  or  some  way  makes  good  the 
faculties  of  himself  "  ;  for  every  character  in 
144 


BERNARD  SHAW 

drama  truly  lives  on  just  the  same  terms.  Since 
drama  is  rooted  in  character,  and  finds  in  action 
its  expression  and  fulfilment,  it  is  the  business  of 
the  dramatist  first  to  create  character,  and  then 
to  devise  means  by  which  it  may  act  its  nature. 
It  is  not  the  highest  business  of  the  dramatist  to 
devise  a  situation,  and  then  to  invent  such  persons 
as  may  be  necessary  for  its  exploitation  :  that  way 
lies  our  old  friend  the  piece  Men  faite.  Nor  is  it 
the  highest  business  of  the  dramatist  to  assemble 
his  people  and  to  hand  to  each  of  them  one  from 
a  neat  assortment  of  qualities  that  he  may  hang 
it  like  a  charm  about  his  neck  :  the  outcome  of 
that  procedure  is  the  play  of  "  humours."  Hazlitt 
spoke  the  last  word  upon  the  play  of  humours 
when  he  said  of  Ben  Jonson  that  his  plots  were 
*'  improbable  by  an  excess  of  consistency  "  and 
that  his  people  were  "  extravagant  tautologies  of 
themselves."  Now  we  have  seen  how  the  plots 
of  even  the  best  of  Mr.  Shaw's  plays,  plays  like 
You  Never  Can  Tell  and  Captain  Brassbound's 
Conversion,  are  improbable  by  an  excess  of 
consistency ;  and  are  not  his  people  too  often 
extravagant  tautologies  of  themselves  ?  We  may 
see  the  genesis  of  the  type  in  the  earliest  of  all 
the  plays.  Sartorius  is  an  unprincipled  money- 
grubber.  When  Lickcheese,  his  cast-off  hireling, 
comes  to  him  with  a  scheme  that  he  says  will  put 
money  into  his  pocket,  Sartorius  asks,  quite 
against  likelihood,   "  How  much  money,"  where- 

K  145 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

upon  Lickcheese  remarks,  "  Ah !  there  you  speak 
.'4ike  yourself,  Sartorius."  Exactly  :  every  man  in 
his  humour.  Now  see  how  Mr.  Shaw's  persons, 
as  their  author  came  to  care  less  and  less  for 
character  and  more  and  more  for  exposition, 
degenerated  steadily  into  types.  Are  not  Cholly, 
with  his  "  certain  amount  of  tosh,"  and  B.B.,  with 
his  "  stimulate  the  phagocytes,"  and  Mr.  Tarleton, 
with  his  "  read  Whatshisname,"  and  General 
Mitchener,  with  his  "  shoot  them  down,"  in- 
creasingly after  the  Ben  Jonson  manner  ?  The 
professor  of  Greek  who  can  never  open  his  mouth 
without  quoting  Euripides  is  in  no  way  more 
subtly  characterized  than  was  our  old  friend  of 
a  hundred  appearances  who  proved  that  he  must 
be  a  professor  by  his  habit  of  correcting  proofs  in 
the  drawing-room.  The  line  of  least  resistance  has 
led  Mr.  Shaw  then,  as  to  character,  straight  back 
into  the  comedy  of  humours.  It  has  led  him,  as 
to  composition,  straight  back  into  the  piece  hien 
faite,  with  a  difference  ;  that  is  to  say,  not  into  the 
play  of  concentrated  "  situation,"  but  into  the 
play  whose  situations,  such  as  they  are,  are  varied 
with  comic  relief.  Where  may  we  find  Mr.  Shaw 
at  his  most  serious  ?  Well,  he  has  named  The 
Doctor'' s  Dilemma  a  tragedy :  let  us  try  there. 
He  has  not  been  sparing  of  such  tragic  qualities 
as  he  could  endow  Dubedat  with  :  for  "  the  most 
tragic  thing  in  the  world  is  a  man  of  genius  who  is 
not  also  a  man  of  honour,"  and  we  are  to  believe 
146 


BERNARD  SHAW 

that  the  painter  Dubedat  is  a  man  of  genius.  Mr. 
Shaw  told  us  early  of  his  own  determination  to 
accept  '*  problem  "  as  the  only  material  of  drama  : 
the  problem  in  which  he  seeks  to  interest  us  here 
is,  supposing  we  had  the  choice  between  a  good 
man  and  good  pictures,  which  should  we  choose  ? 
He  proceeds  to  kill  Dubedat  slowly  quite  close 
to  the  footlights  with  all  the  doctors  clowning 
about  him.  Can  "  problem " — far  more,  can 
tragedy — live  in  such  an  atmosphere  as  that  ? 
Of  course  not,  both  are  in  a  minute  as  dead  as 
Dubedat,  and  the  play  drags  on  to  an  ending  that 
we  do  not  care  about  in  the  least.  The  easy  way 
to  write  a  tragedy  is  to  arrange  for  some  one  in  the 
course  of  an  indiscriminate  action  to  die.  The 
hard  way  is  to  cause  a  person  of  such  character 
to  die,  contending  with  a  series  of  such  circum- 
stances, that  the  whole  of  life  is  somehow  seen  to 
be  there  on  the  stage  at  issue.  It  is  quite  true 
that  life  does  not  stop  being  funny  (if  that  is  the 
word  for  it)  when  the  fatal  knock  comes  on 
Macbeth's  gate,  or  when  Hamlet  is  in  his  agony, 
or  when  Lear  is  driven  forth  in  the  infirmity  of  his 
age  :  there  are  still  porters  and  grave-diggers  and 
fools  in  the  world.  But  the  point  is  that,  in  the 
hands  of  the  dramatist,  life  does  not  have  to  stop 
in  order  to  be  funny.  Its  march  is  even,  and  the 
true  dramatist's  presentment  of  it  carries  with  it 
his  own  sense  of  the  comedy  of  things.  It  is  Mr. 
Shaw's  determination  at  all  costs  to  stop  and  be 

147 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

funny  that  has  earned  for  him  the  name  ot  farceur  ; 
but  in  this  quaHty,  if  examined  more  closely,  he 
will  be  found  to  have  much  in  common  with  the 
most  conventional  of  his  predecessors  who  were  by 
predestination  practitioners  in  comic  relief.  The 
only  difference  is  that  while  they  practised  it  in  the 
mistaken  belief  that  without  its  aid  we  could  not 
possibly  bear  up  under  the  strain  of  their  tragic 
"  situations,"  Mr.  Shaw  practises  it  merely  because 
he  can  do  it  so  beautifully. 

Akin  to  this  question  of  the  supremacy  of 
character  in  drama  are  all  the  other  things  in  good 
craftsmanship  that  make  up  a  general  impression 
of  reality.  What  do  we  mean,  in  this  connexion, 
by  reality  ?  When  Mr.  Shaw  was  in  the  first 
flush  of  his  success  as  a  dramatist  who  had  waged 
war  on  the  ordinary  theatre,  and  before  he  pro- 
ceeded to  avail  himself  of  the  privilege  of  the 
conqueror  by  converting  to  his  own  use  everything 
he  found  within  the  walls,  he  trumpeted  a  declara- 
tion entitled  A  Dramatic  Realist  to  his  Critics, 
which  celebrated  the  fact  that  the  hero  of  his  anti- 
romantic  comedy  carried  chocolate  instead  of 
cartridges  in  his  cartridge-box.  Mr.  Shaw  was 
possibly  quite  right  in  his  fact ;  but  we  mean  an 
adherence  to  something  more  than  facts  when 
we  speak  of  dramatic  reality.  Let  us  state  again 
the  antinomy  with  which  we  started.  We  may 
state  it  now  in  terms  of  the  difference  between 
the  "  impatience  for  realities "  Mr.  Shaw  the 
148 


BERNARD  SHAW 

philosopher  exhibits,  and  the  contentment  with 
unreaHties  he  exhibits  as  a  playwright.  The 
dramatic  realist,  while  simplifying  character  of 
necessity,  would  not  carry  simplification  of  cha- 
racter to  the  point  to  which  we  have  seen  Mr.  Shaw 
carry  it.  This  matter  of  simplification  is  important. 
The  secret  of  Mr.  Shaw's  dramatic  criticism 
was  simplification — the  public  was  always  wrong. 
When  Mr,  Shaw  turned  from  writing  about  plays 
to  the  vastly  more  difficult  business  of  writing 
them,  he  still  proceeded  by  a  method  of  simplifica- 
tion. The  best,  as  well  as  the  worst,  of  Mr.  Shaw's 
characters  are  achieved  by  a  process  of  simplifica- 
tion —  Lady  Cecily  and  William  the  waiter, 
Broadbent  and  Straker,  Captain  Kearney  and  the 
Newspaper  Man.  The  Shaw  Girl,  who  might  have 
for  her  motto  the  line  from  The  Admirable  Bash- 
ville : 

Two  things  I  hate,  my  duty  and  my  mother  ; 

the  Shaw  Boy,  whether  as  the  poet  in  Candida  or 
in  successive  reincarnations ;  the  ruthless  Man 
of  Action,  the  man  or  woman  with  the  soul  of  a 
servant,  the  youthful  or  elderly  Aim  or  Butt,  who 
may  be  of  either  sex — we  have  seen  how  all  of 
these  tend,  when  they  fall  below  their  best,  to 
achieve  the  ultimate  simplification  in  the  mere 
"  type."  Allied  to  Mr.  Shaw's  simplification  of 
character,  which  results  in  the  type,  is  his  sim- 
plification   of    humour,    which    results    in    mere 

149 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

repetition.  The  Supposition  Accurate,  as  when 
Burgess  sarcastically  supposes  Eugene  to  be  an 
earl  and  he  proves  to  be  the  nephew  of  an  earl, 
is  a  good  form  of  surprise ;  but  it  is  not  so  good 
when  we  find  Mr.  Gilbey  sarcastically  supposing 
Juggins  to  be  the  brother  of  a  duke,  and  Juggins 
proving  to  be  the  brother  of  a  duke.  "  See  then,  ye 
gods,  the  duke  turn  footman  "  is  the  Shavian  comic 
formula,  as  well  as  Cashel  Byron's.  The  Supposi- 
tion Inaccurate  is  a  form  of  surprise  that  may 
more  safely  stand  the  strain  of  Mr.  Shaw's 
characteristic  repetition,  and  it  leads  repeatedly 
to  some  of  his  happiest  comic  effects,  as  when  the 
rigid  McComas  supposes  William's  son  to  be  a 
potman  when  he  is  really  a  barrister,  or  when 
Tanner,  priding  himself  on  being  alone  in  his 
congratulation  of  Violet  upon  her  defiance  of  the 
marriage  law,  finds  that  she  has  not  defied  the 
marriage  law,  and  on  congratulating  Hector  Malone 
upon  the  same  independence  of  character,  finds 
that  he  has  not  defied  the  marriage  law  either. 
But  Mr.  Shaw's  simplification  of  character  is  as 
nothing  to  his  simplification  of  incident. 

The  modern  theatre  has  no  longer  a  belief  in  a 
unity  of  time  and  a  unity  of  place,  but  it  has  fixed 
very  clearly  in  their  room  what  we  may  speak  of 
as  a  reality  of  time  and  a  reality  of  place.  Nothing 
is  of  more  usual  occurrence  in  the  "  practical  " 
theatre  than  the  meal  which  takes  only  a  minute  ; 
not  because  it  would  in  reality  take  only  a  minute, 
150 


BERNARD  SHAW 

but  because  the  dramatist  simply  has  "»*  taken 
the  trouble  to  defer  to  reality.    A  small  thing,  it 
may  be  said,  and  so  it  is,  but  one  of  those  sma^^ 
Ttogs  that  are  not  negligible;    for  who  has  not 
found  his  pleasure  in  something  very  much  larger 
dXacted  feom  by  just   such   a   -aU  piece  o 
dramatic  unreality?    Mr.  Shaw,  m  taking  over 
the  "practical"  theatre's  exhibitions  of  eatmg 
and  drhiking,  took  over  the  "  practical  "theatre  s 
Srelersness'of  the  reality  of   «- :    the   peop  e 
in   his   plays   are   sometimes   allowed   the   most 
absu  dly  short  periods  in  which  to  take  supper 
"smoke  a  whole  P^Pe-    ^s  for  the  rcahty  of 
nlace   we  have  seen  the  obverse  of  that  m  the 
C  in    which    the    people    who    are    necessary 
r  the    action    of   his   plays   most   remarkably 
tod   themselves   gathered   together.     Really    m 
this   matter   Mr.    Shaw  is   qmte   cynical.     It  is 
ntessC  for  example,  to  Mr.  Shaw's  "tragedy^ 
that  all  ihc  doctors,  picked  men  every  one  of  them 
should  attend  upon  the  penniless  artist ;   and  this 
is  how  Mr.  Shaw  takes  care  of  the  curcumstance  : 
MBS.  DUBEBAT.    Thete  I  be  good  now  :   '(^T'-^berJhat 

s^X".r:^xrSon'^^u*.nu 

of  them,  to  consult  about  you  ? 

There  is  only  one  reply:    It  is,   extraordinarily 
kind      Or  it's,  to  put  it  in  the  way  Mr.  Shaw 
prefers   to   put   it,    "A   dramatic   coincidence! 
ind  as  for  the  reverse  of  the  picture,  we  have  that 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

whenever  it  is  desirable  that  the  people  gathered 
together  should  be  in  some  other  place,  where- 
upon, as  in  Man  and  Superman,  they  forthwith  find 
themselves  gathered  together  there.  If  Mr.  Shaw 
were  to  write  a  play  about  Mahomet  (as  he  probably 
will),  it  would  trouble  him  just  as  little  to  bring 
the  mountain  to  Mahomet  as  to  bring  Mahomet  to 
the  mountain. 

It  has  been  claimed  for  Mr.  Shaw,  by  himself, 
that  in  two  of  his  most  recent  plays  "  a  return  has 
been  made  to  unity  of  time  and  place  as  observed 
in  the  ancient  Greek  drama."  The  claim  does  not 
amount  to  very  much,  for  if  the  dramatist  is  at 
liberty  to  send  all  over  the  parish  to  fetch  in  the 
Mayoress  and  the  beadle,  to  put  the  Mayoress  off 
into  a  highly  communicative  trance,  and  to  recruit 
the  number  of  his  persons  by  aeroplane  if  the 
conversation  shows  signs  of  flagging,  it  should  not 
be  difficult  for  him  to  make  the  action  of  his  play 
continuous,  particularly  if  his  play  has  no  action. 

No,  Mr.  Shaw  is  not  a  dramatic  realist.  Reality 
does  not  lie  at  the  end  of  the  line  of  least  resist- 
ance, as  Mr.  Shaw,  in  his  capacity  of  philosopher, 
has  written  twenty-three  plays  to  establish.  The 
play  which  immediately  followed  Ccesar  and 
Cleopatra  was  Man  and  Superman.  Quite  the  best 
and  most  complete  expression  of  Mr.  Shaw's 
"  philosophy  "  is  to  be  found  in  Man  and  Super- 
man, the  "  comedy  "  of  which  is  a  very  easygoing 
affair.  Its  third  act,  in  Hell,  the  "  home  of  the 
152 


BERNARD  SHAW 

unreal,"  with  Heaven,  the  "  home  of  the  masters 
of  reahty,"  just  round  the  corner,  is  the  Quint- 
essence of  Shavianism ;  but  it  has  so  Httle  to  do 
with  the  theatre  that  when  the  play  is  given  there 
it  is  found  necessary  to  omit  it.  Man  and  Super- 
man, while  the  most  characteristic  product  of  Mr. 
Shaw's  genius,  is  thus  not  one  of  the  best  of  his 
plays,  because  it  does  not  carry  its  burden.  To 
put  the  case  another  way,  its  comic  vision  and  its 
philosophic  vision  are  not  in  alignment.  The 
struggle  between  the  Philosopher  and  the  Play- 
wright has  been  fearful,  but  the  playwright  has 
not  won.  It  is  perhaps  their  consciousness  of  this 
inability  finally  to  express  all  that  their  author 
would  have  them  express  that  drives  Mr.  Shaw's 
persons  into  violence — a  highly  simplified  form  of 
action.  All  the  persons  of  Mr.  Shaw's  plays  are 
violent — from  Blanche  Sartorius,  who  takes  up 
the  parlourmaid  by  the  hair  of  her  head,  and  from 
Julia  Craven,  who  shakes  the  Philanderer  and 
growls  over  him  "like  a  tigress  over  her  cub," 
down  to  Margaret  Knox,  whose  very  similar 
handling  of  her  Bobby  gives  the  Frenchman  his 
idea  that  these  English  domestic  interiors  are  very 
interesting.  Mr.  Shaw  does  not  shrink  from  the 
exhibition  of  physical  violence — for  tragic  effect, 
as  when  Bill  bashes  his  fist  into  the  face  of  the 
Salvation  lassie  ;  or  for  comic  effect,  as  when  we 
are  asked  to  laugh  very  heartily  at  the  spectacle 
of  Felix  Drink  water  carried  out  to  be  bathed.     In 

153 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

Candida  the  collar  of  the  poet  suffers  violence  at 
the  hands  of  the  clergyman,  and  in  the  little  skit 
upon  Candida  both  He  and  Her  Husband  end  up 
on  the  floor.  Even  Mr.  Shaw's  use  of  stage- 
properties  tends  to  be  violent — as  witness  the 
book-cases  at  the  Ibsen  Club  that  are  sent  spinning 
by  the  huntress  in  pursuit  of  her  prey,  the  dentist's 
chair  that  is  let  down  with  a  bang  in  You  Never 
Can  Tell,  or  the  aeroplane  that  falls  with  a  smash 
into  Mr.  Tarleton's  glass-houses.  Mr.  Shaw  is 
fond  of  securing  that  crescendo  of  excitement 
which  is  so  valuable  at  the  fall  of  an  intermediate 
curtain  by  starting  the  engine  of  a  motor-car 
behind  the  scenes.  That  he  is  not  incapable  of  the 
quietly  effective  opportunities  the  theatre  offers 
we  may  see  when  the  maid  who  has  been  shaken 
by  Blanche  is  heard  passing  the  library  door  of 
the  Sartorius  household  "with  a  tray  jingling,"  or 
when  Her  Husband  announces  his  entry  by  tapping 
the  barometer  in  the  hall  downstairs.  These  quiet 
things  are  good  ;  but  Mr.  Shaw,  we  feel,  prefers  the 
noisier  ones.  Nor  does  Mr.  Shaw's  love  of  violence 
stop  short  at  the  physical.  Here  is  one  fragment 
of  conversation  between  a  lady  and  gentleman 
about  to  be  married  : 

Raina  [sarcastically].  A  shocking  sacrifice,  isn't  it  ? 
Such  beauty  !  Such  intellect  I  Such  modesty  I  wasted  on 
a  middle-aged  servant  man.  Really,  Sergius,  you  cannot 
stand  by  and  allow  such  a  thing.  It  would  be  unworthy 
of  your  chivalry. 
154 


BERNARD  SHAW 

Sergius  [losing  all  self-control].  Viper  !  Viper  !  [He 
rushes  to  and  fro,  raging.] 

Bluntschli.  Look  here,  Saranoff  :  you're  getting  the 
worst  of  this. 

And  here  is  another  : 

Tanner.  You  lie,  you  vampire  :  you  lie.  .  .  .  Infamous, 
abandoned  woman  !    Devil ! 

Ann.    Boa-constrictor  !    Elephant  I 

Tanner.    Hypocrite  1 

Ann.     I  must  be,  for  my  future  husband's  sake. 

Tanner.  For  mine  I  [correcting  himself  savagely]  I  mean 
for  his. 

On  this  kind  of  evidence  it  has  been  claimed  for 
Mr.  Shaw,  this  time  not  by  himself,  that  indig- 
nation is  the  passion  that  spins  the  Shavian  plot. 
It  has  been  urged  that  all  his  principal  persons  are 
gifted,  like  Mr.  Cuthbertson  in  The  Philanderer, 
with  "  an  habitually  indignant  manner."  But  to 
say  merely  this  is  to  miss  a  point  of  importance. 
Indignation  may  be  a  quite  vital  emotion,  but  the 
fact  is  that  the  persons  of  Mr.  Shaw's  drama  are 
galvanized  rather  than  vitalized.  His  own  impulse 
to  the  drama  may  be  indignation  ;  he  has  stated  it 
thus  :  "  To  me  the  tragedy  and  comedy  of  life  lie 
in  the  consequences,  sometimes  terrible,  some- 
times ludicrous,  of  our  persistent  attempts  to 
found  our  institutions  on  the  ideals  suggested 
to  our  imaginations  by  our  half- satisfied  passions, 
instead  of  on  a  genuinely  scientific  natural  history  ": 

155 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

a  strictly  intellectual  indignation.  This  intel- 
lectual indignation  finds  its  most  highly  simplified 
utterance  in  the  exclamation  of  Tanner  :  "  What 
a  country  !  What  a  world  !  "  It  is  in  essence  an 
indignation  with  men  and  women  for  their  stupidity 
in  being,  what  another  dramatist  without  indig- 
nation said  they  were,  merely  players.  The  Devil 
finds  life  to  be  an  "  infinite  comedy  of  illusion," 
and  Mr.  Shaw  is  intellectually  indignant  that  his 
contemporaries  should  continue  to  side  with  the 
Devil.  This  intellectual  indignation  with  make- 
believe  issues  most  happily  in  scenes  of  comedy, 
such  as  the  scene  in  the  early  play  in  which  Raina, 
herself  very  indignant  at  the  accusation  that  she 
has  ever  in  her  life  told  more  than  two  lies,  suddenly 
throws  up  the  sponge  and  sinks  to  the  ottoman 
with  the  surrendering  sigh,  "  How  did  you  find  me 
out  ?  "  The  most  nearly  tragically  indignant  of 
the  plays  is  Mrs.  Warren's  Profession,  and  Mrs. 
Warren's  Profession  has  so  little  genuine  emotion 
as  to  be  nothing  but  an  essay  in  galvanism.  In 
the  second  act  Mrs.  Warren  is  galvanized  into 
expression  of  her  views  ;  and  at  the  end  of  the 
third  act,  when  the  play  is  obviously  flagging,  an 
attempt  is  made  to  galvanize  the  whole  thing  into  a 
semblance  of  vigour  by  the  exciting  suggestion  that 
the  love  of  Frank  and  Vivie  is  destined  to  tragedy 
because  they  are  children  of  the  same  father.  But 
the  fourth  act  makes  it  clear  that  Frank  and  Vivie 
are  not  in  love,  and  the  highly  indignant  preface 
156 


BERNARD  SHAW 

explicitly  states  their  possible  consanguinity  to  be 
an  "  insoluble  problem."  The  heroics  with  a  gun 
at  the  fall  of  the  third  curtain  are  thus  a  piece  of 
quite  gratuitous  violence.  No  one  in  this  play  is 
really  indignant ;  they  are  puppets  at  the  end  of 
wires,  and  the  wires  are  attached  to  a  battery,  and 
Mr.  Shaw  is  in  charge  of  the  current.  Nor  are  we 
made  indignant  by  this  scientific  demonstration ; 
only  Mr.  Shaw  is  indignant,  and  he  has  to  take 
a  preface  for  the  purpose  because  his  indignation 
is  intellectual  indignation.  The  measure  of  Mr. 
Shaw's  inability  as  a  writer  of  plays  is  to  be  found 
in  the  measure  of  his  ability  as  a  writer  of  prefaces ; 
just  as  the  measure  of  his  necessity  for  stage 
directions  is  the  measure  of  his  failure  in  the 
creation  of  character. 

But  the  concentrated  intellectual  indignation  of 
which  Tanner's  remark  was  the  expression  would 
be  productive  of  a  series  of  such  remarks  rather 
than  of  plays  as  pleasant  of  those  of  Mr.  Shaw, 
plays  which  result  for  the  most  part  in  that 
"  general  laughter  and  good  humour "  which 
characterized,  we  read,  the  indiscriminate  gathering 
on  the  Sierra  Nevada.  The  truth  is  that  Mr. 
Shaw's  philosophy  issues  cheerful  as  the  religion 
of  Major  Barbara — the  religion  which  she  aban- 
doned for  the  religion  of  Mrs.  George  and  of  Mrs. 
Knox  when  she  came  to  find  happiness  "  within 
herself."  Margaret  Knox,  with  happiness  within 
herself,  knocks  two  teeth  out  of  a  policeman  ;   and 

157 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

all  the  best  of  Mr.  Shaw's  people  have  this  rather 
excessive  happiness  within  them,  although  the 
wires  by  which  their  author  has  communicated 
it  are  not  always  hid.  The  theatre  of  Mr.  Shaw 
is  a  theatre  out  of  which  the  devil  of  romance  was 
cast  and  into  which  the  seven  devils  of  romance 
have  entered.  That  is  why  it  is  such  an  amusing 
theatre.  "  The  artist's  work  is  to  show  us  our- 
selves as  we  really  are,"  says  Tanner,  but  Mr. 
Shaw's  theatre  does  not  show  us  ourselves  as  we 
really  are  ;  it  is  quite  free  from  "  sawdid  reeyelli- 
ties."  It  shows  us  a  world  of  Mr.  Shaw's  own 
witty  invention,  in  which  love  and  business  and 
religion  and  even  politics  are  violently  amusing. 
Never  was  mortal  lover  stricken  with  such  exciting 
symptoms  as  Valentine  at  first  sight  of  his  Gloria. 
Sex  in  the  Shavian  theatre  becomes  a  duel,  business 
becomes  a  glorious  power  over  reality,  religion  an 
ecstasy,  politics  an  arena  in  which  Tom  Broadbent 
is  baited.  "  There  are  larger  loves  and  diviner 
dreams  than  the  fireside  ones,"  says  the  ex-Major 
Barbara,  and  this  and  no  other  is  the  Secret  in  the 
Poet's  Heart.  What  is  Mr.  Shaw's  love  of  violence 
but  an  outcome  of  the  "  incurably  romantic  dis- 
position "  he  shares  with  the  hero  of  the  anti- 
romantic  comedy  ?  This  love  of  violence  is  the 
key  to  the  best  things  in  Mr.  Shaw's  art,  as  well 
as  to  the  poorest.  It  is  the  key,  on  the  one  hand, 
to  undergraduate  pleasantries  such  as  Tanner's 
"  No  man  is  a  match  for  a  woman  except  with  a 
158 


BERNARD  SHAW 

poker  and  a  pair  of  hob- nailed  boots,"  and  to  all 
the  things  of  excess  and  too  great  ease  that  we 
have  considered.  It  is  the  key,  on  the  other  hand, 
to  the  quality  of  urgent  and  spirited  speech  which 
Mr.  Shaw  at  his  best  has  in  common  with  the 
writers  of  the  Restoration,  and  which  it  is  his 
greatest  merit  to  have  brought  back  into  the 
theatre.  Unlike  the  verbal  wit  of  Wilde,  which  is 
leisured  and  dainty,  all  the  best  of  the  verbal  wit 
in  Mr.  Shaw's  plays  is  sharp  and  explosive.  "  You 
call  yourself  a  gentleman,  and  you  offer  me  half  !  " 
*'  I  do  not  call  myself  a  gentleman,  but  I  offer  you 
half."  It  is  not  only  the  professional  expert  in 
explosives  who  has  powers  of  retort  of  this  deadly 
suddenness.  "  Respect !  Treat  my  own  daughter 
with  respect !  "  explodes  Mrs.  Warren.  The 
generally  placid  old  lady  who  is  mother  to  Ann 
and  prospective  grandmother  to  the  superman 
goes  off  at  her  best  moment  with  the  ricochetting 
decisiveness  of  the  firework  known  to  schoolboys 
as  the  rip-rap  :  "  Oh,  she  is  a  hypocrite.  She  is  : 
she  is.  Isn't  she  ?  "  Bohun  is  a  big  gun  ;  the 
terrible  Twins  cultivate  the  frequency  and  deadli- 
ness  of  the  Maxim ;  the  typical  Shaw  raisonneur, 
whether  he  be  named  Tanner  or  Charteris  or 
Richard  Dudgeon  or,  more  suitably,  Hotchkiss,  is 
nothing  but  an  irrepressible  sharpshooter  potting 
at  heads  wherever  he  sees  them  ;  the  tempo  for  the 
whole  of  the  first  and  best  of  Mr.  Shaw's  comedies 
is  given  by  that  startling  fusillade  of  Bulgarian 

159 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

rifles  outside  the  window  ;  while,  if  we  come  back 
to  character,  there  is  nothing  more  economical  and 
satisfying  in  the  whole  range  of  Mr.  Shaw's  persons 
than  the  sole  and  tremendous  outburst  of  the 
Italian  pirate  Marzo  :  "  Only  dam  thief.  Dam 
liar.  Dam  rascal.  .  .  .  She  saint.  She  get  me 
to  heaven — get  us  all  to  heaven.  We  do  what  we 
like  now." 

We  have  come  back  to  character,  and  we  have 
come  to  the  last  of  Mr.  Shaw's  best  plays.  The 
Shewing-Up  of  Blanco  Posnet.  Between  the  two 
pieces  written  in  emulation  of  the  severe  beauties 
of  ancient  Greek  drama,  Mr.  Shaw  happened  to 
write  a  small  masterpiece.  Of  all  the  plays  with 
which  Mr.  Shaw  has  filled  in  the  "  hackneyed 
stage  framework  "  which  he  set  out  to  "  humanize," 
none  has  more  completely  avoided  his  charac- 
teristic excesses  nor  come  so  near  the  human  as 
the  short  play  of  Blanco  Posnet.  The  place  is  *'  a 
territory  of  the  United  States  of  America,"  but  it 
does  not  matter  ;  its  reality  is  established  and 
its  reality  is  preserved.  The  duration  is  about 
half  an  hour,  and,  while  the  reality  of  time  is 
preserved  very  skilfully,  it  is  long  enough  to 
contain  both  life  and  death.  The  people  in  it,  a 
dozen  or  more,  truly  live,  because  in  the  short 
time  they  are  before  us  each  one  of  them  is,  by 
the  exercise  of  the  dramatist's  art,  able  to  act  his 
or  her  nature,  and  to  make  good  in  some  way  the 
faculties,  not  of  Mr.  Shaw,  but  of  themselves. 
160 


BERNARD  SHAW 

Because  the  play  has  its  own  comic  vision,  there 
is  no  need  of  comic  relief  ;  nor  is  there  any  tedious 
overplus  through  lack  of  the  play's  ability  to 
prove  a  vehicle  sufficient  for  its  burden  of  philo- 
sophy. There  is  even  about  this  play  a  sort  of 
chastened  beauty.  It  has  not  a  symptom  of 
G.B.S.'s  complaint.  The  story  of  how  religion 
found  Blanco  the  horse-thief,  or  rather  of  how 
Blanco  the  horse- thief  found  religion— "  within 
himself"— is  an  entertaining  anecdote,  but  it  is 
more,  it  is  the  perfectly  effective  expression  through 
the  theatre  of  what  the  author  had  it  in  him  to 
express. 

Mr.  Bernard  Shaw,  the  philosopher  turned  play- 
wright, early  in  life  took  the  advice  the  Statue 
gave  to  Don  Juan:  he  "put  his  discoveries  in 
the  form  of  entertaining  anecdotes."  In  another 
kind  of  examination,  we  might  have  looked  into 
the  nature  of  these  discoveries,  and  ended  on  a 
note  of  thankfulness  for  the  entertainment,  not 
always  inseparable  from  a  study  of  philosophy, 
enjoyed  by  the  way.  This  chapter  has  been  con- 
cerned not  with  the  discoveries  of  the  philosopher, 
but  with  the  precise  form  of  the  anecdotes  devised 
by  the  playwright  for  our  entertainment,  and  to 
contain  the  philosopher's  view  of  life.  It  is  not 
possible  to  end  without  thankfulness  for  the  in- 
tellectual vivacity  Mr.  Shaw  has  brought  to  the 
theatre;  but  it  is  possible  to  remain  perfectly 
conscious  that  he  has  not  profoundly  affected  the 

^  161 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

,.eat.e  because  ^Ve^^^^^^'^'l^\^.:t 
profoundly  «!^t«f  >*;^  ^^;^,Z  that  Mr.  Shaw 
our  ^--•"^f^^Xs  4  Z7„o;  say  that  he  is 

rrto^^mS'--^  the  -t ""''  "^'°' 

among  the  minor  English  dramatists. 


162 


VI 
ST.  JOHN  HANKIN 

THE  English  drama  as  Oscar  Wilde  left  it 
is  the  English  drama  that  St.  John 
Hankin  took  up.  "  I  took  the  drama," 
wrote  Wilde,  at  the  end  of  his  life,  "  I  took  the 
drama,  the  most  objective  form  known  to  art, 
and  made  it  as  personal  a  mode  of  expression  as 
the  lyric  or  sonnet ;  at  the  same  time  I  widened 
its  range  and  enriched  its  characterization." 
That  he  did  not  do  all  these  things  it  is  needless 
to  say.  Wilde  made  the  theatre,  or  found  the 
theatre  rather,  a  perfect  vehicle  for  his  own 
personal  wit ;  in  a  sense,  by  producing  "  Salom6  " 
with  the  one  hand  and  "  The  Importance  of  Being 
Earnest "  with  the  other,  he  may  be  said  to  have 
widened  its  range ;  but  certainly  he  did  not 
proceed,  by  elevating  character  into  its  rightful 
importance  above  action,  to  open  up  a  new  path 
for  contemporary  drama.  This  he  left  to  be  done 
by  his  successors,  and  as  much  by  St.  John  Hankin 
as  by  any  man.  Wilde  enriched  the  English 
theatre   with   one   perfectly   delightful   play,    the 

163 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

Continental  theatre  with  another  Pl^Y  "^  P^^;^^^' 
beauty,  and  the  theatre  everywhere  with  a  tradition 
of  wit'^Lt  a^y  cost  that  has  proved,  in  the  hands^ 
lesser  men,  an  embarrassing  Po^^'f '°"; ^^^^, "''' 
not  enrich  at  all  the  theatre's  <=har^«t^"^f' °^ 
if  by  this  we  mean  the  creation  of  .I'vng^"^ 
recognizable  persons,  to  know  whom  is  to  k^w 
more  of  life,  and  to  wonder  at  it  more  pleasurably. 
H  WiUe  c^uld  surprise  us.  he  was  well  enough 
pleased ;    and  his  way  of  surprising  us  was  by 
Thining   dialogue   and   by   situations   so   artfully 
coZved  as  'often  to  be  quite  taP"-!? «'  ^^^^ 
than  by  the  greater  artist's  way.  which  is  to  show 
us  the  wonders  within  the  heart  of  man.    At  least 
he  does  surprise  us,  by  dialogue  and  situation 
and  to  do  that  is  out  of  reaeh  of  the  journeymen. 
But  there  is  another  way  that  the  lesser  and  m»e 
sincere   artist  than  Wilde   may  take.    He  may 
take  the  beaten  path  and,  by  keeping  close  to 
character,  although  he  may  ^"7"=%"; J^Jf  ;'; 
he  may  yet  give  us  the  real  and  constant  pleasures 
of  Recognition.    The  advantage  of  keeping  upon 
this  path  is  that  it  is  the  path  the  P^'^t  "t'^*; 
when  he  comes,   will  inevitably  tread    only  he 
will  find  great  surprises  in  it  at  every  turn,     ihe 
^neer  dramatist  like  Hankin-(and  the  beaten 
path  in  the  arts  is  always  in  great  need  of  pioneers) 
if  his  bent  be  gently  ironical,  will  write  comedies 
;;;ih  an  intention  very  like  that  of  the  Restoration 
writers :  ' 

1G4 


ST.  JOHN  HANKIN 

Follies  to-night  we  show  ne'er  lashed  before, 
Yet  such  as  nature  shows  you  every  hour  ; 
Nor  can  the  pictures  give  a  just  offence, 
For  fools  are  made  for  jests  to  men  of  sense. 

Hankin's  people — one  might  almost  write  Hankin's 
fools,  but  not  quite — may  not,  as  Mrs.  Cheveley 
in  *'An  Ideal  Husband"  did,  "make  great 
demands  on  one's  curiosity."  But  then,  in  reality, 
neither  do  Wilde's  people,  in  the  just  sense  that 
Shakespeare's  or  Sheridan's  people  do.  The  com- 
plete justification  of  Hankin's  minor  comedy  of 
recognition  is  that  Nature  shows  us  such  people 
every  hour,  and  that  the  dramatist  has  rendered 
them  noteworthy  by  his  own  fine  sense  of  dramatic 
style. 

Hankin's  work  for  the  theatre  took  the  form  of 
five  full-length  comedies,  two  short  plays,  and 
some  clear-headed  and  witty  criticism.  If  we 
look  at  the  plays,  we  shall  soon  see  how  close,  in 
1904,  he  was  to  the  Wilde  tradition : 

Lady  Fabingfoed  [to  Mrs.  Jackson].  You  remember 
her  ?  She  was  Stella's  governess.  Quite  an  intelligent, 
good  creature.  But  I  dare  say  you  never  met  her.  She 
never  used  to  come  down  to  dinner.  I  always  think 
German  governesses  so  much  more  satisfactory  than 
English.  You  see,  there's  never  any  question  about 
having  to  treat  them  as  ladies.  And  then  they're  always 
so  plain.  That's  a  great  advantage.  And  German  is 
such  a  useful  language,  far  more  useful  for  a  young  girl 
than  French.  There  are  so  many  more  books  she  can  be 
allowed  to  read  in  it.  French  can  be  learnt  later — and 
should  be,  in  my  opinion. 

165 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

Mbs.  Pbatt.  I  quite  agree  with  you,  Lady  Faringford. 
But  the  Rector  is  less  strict  in  these  matters.  He  allowed 
my  girls  to  begin  French  directly  they  went  to  school,  at 
Miss  Thursby's.  But  I  am  boimd  to  say  they  never  seem 
to  have  learnt  any.    So  perhaps  it  did  no  harm. 

Mbs.  Jackson.  Yes,  I  have  always  heard  Miss  Thursby's 
was  an  excellent  school. 

But  Wilde  would  never  have  written  The  Return 
of  the  Prodigal.  He  would  never  have  studied 
so  patiently  as  Hankin  did  the  lesser  country 
houses  of  Gloucestershire,  Leicestershire,  and 
Dorsetshire.  Hankin's  first  play  is  set  in  the 
suburb  of  Norwood,  and  in  the  suburb  of  Norwood 
Wilde  could  never  have  been  prevailed  upon  to  set 
foot  at  all.  Lady  Stutfield  and  the  Archdeacon, 
Lady  Bracknel  and  the  Honourable  Gwendolen, 
the  Duchess  of  Berwick  and  her  little  chatterbox, 
were  seen  for  a  moment  in  galvanic  action  during 
the  London  season ;  their  stage  counterparts, 
without  the  wit,  were  already  types  in  the  theatres 
of  Wilde's  day.  Hankin  is  at  no  pains  to  keep 
his  people  from  appearing  types,  the  vaguely 
fatuous  old  lady  or  the  "  very  pretty  girl  of  twenty- 
two  "  is  of  frequent  recurrence  ;  but  Lady  Faring- 
ford and  Stella,  Lady  Denison  and  Margery,  Mrs. 
Jackson  or  the  Countess  of  Remenham,  may  at 
any  moment  falsify  their  author's  small  hope  of 
them  and  develop  a  character.  Hankin  was  happy 
in  this  too,  that  no  sudden  success  in  the  theatre 
set  him  writing  plays  out  of  his  mere  cleverness 
166 


ST.  JOHN  HANKIN 

and  facility.  He  waited,  as  the  wise  artist  waits, 
for  an  idea,  and  then  he  made  a  play  of  it.  Five 
plays,  with  Hankin,  mean  five  genuine  ideas,  apt 
for  comedy.  A  bad  Mr.  Wetherby,  living  in  a 
bachelor  flat,  and  a  good  Mr.  Wetherby,  living 
en  famille,  may  shake  hands  over  the  walnuts 
and  wine  and  congratulate  one  another,  "  My  bad 
reputation  is  as  hollow  as  your  good  one.  We're 
both  frauds  together."  A  prodigal  son  so  arranges 
his  return  that  he  gets  the  whip- hand  of  his  family 
and  is  enabled  to  go  out  into  the  wilderness  again 
replenished  in  his  resources.  An  excellent  lady 
and  her  pretty  daughter  arrive  at  an  interesting 
distinction  between  the  false  hospitality  and 
the  true,  in  accordance  with  which  they  invite  a 
lot  of  people  to  their  house,  not  because  they  like 
them,  but  "  out  of  kindness  " — with  results  that 
are  both  dreadful  and  amusing.  A  wise  little 
lady  of  family,  whose  son  has  engaged  himself  to 
the  usual  musical  comedy  actress,  puts  into 
practice,  in  the  beUef  that  "  love  thrives  on 
opposition,"  a  plan  of  killing  it  by  kindness — an 
exercise,  almost  mathematical  in  its  neatness, 
in  the  process  of  exhaustion.  A  minor  county 
family,  that  has  run  all  to  tarnished  family  por- 
traits and  not  at  all  to  brains  or  character  and  now 
not  even  to  sons,  turns  out  of  doors  the  daughter 
who  has  spirit  enough  to  seek  to  live  her  life  in 
her  own  way ;  and  then,  when  she  produces  an 
heir,  would  like  to  take  her  back  again — but  she 

167 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

won't  come.  The  "  idea  "  of  a  Hankin  play  is 
always  concrete  and  well-imagined  enough  to  be 
readily  statable  in  a  few  words ;  and  its  progress 
is  never  cluttered  up  with  a  lot  of  unnecessary 
"ideas."  Hankin  is  perfectly  clear  about  the 
essential  thing.  "  It  is  the  dramatist's  business," 
he  says,  in  one  of  his  essays  on  the  plays  of  other 
people,  "  to  represent  life,  not  to  argue  about  it." 
He  is  equally  clear  about  the  things  that  make 
up  good  stage-craft,  the  audible  and  visible  things 
in  the  dramatist's  art  that  subserve  dramatic  idea 
in  its  illumination  of  character ;  but  these  he  did 
not  always  achieve  so  clearly  as  he  may  have  wished 
to  have  done.  The  critic,  who  finds  it  compara- 
tively easy  to  know  what  he  thinks  good,  is  liable 
when  he  becomes  author  to  find  himself  resting 
contented  with  the  less  good.  It  is  probable  that 
Hankin  never  wished  very  consciously  for  an  art 
of  the  stage  that  was  much  in  advance  of  that 
which  he  found  around  him — no  more  consciously 
than  Wilde  did ;  but  in  technical  matters,  in 
matters  of  the  general  ordering  of  his  stage,  his 
taste  was  for  neatness  and  the  elimination  of 
conventions  that  were  accepted  merely  because 
they  were  easy.  His  sense  of  the  theatre,  together 
with  its  subtlety,  we  see  very  early,  when  at  the 
final  curtain  of  his  first  play  we  have  the  bad  Mr. 
Wetherby,  newly  constrained  to  accept  his  wife's 
dominion,  and  still  very  easy  in  his  own  mind 
about  it,  going  out  carrying  "  BOTH  the  bags." 
168 


ST.  JOHN  HANKIN 

In  a  later  play  there  is  a  true  instance  of  the  way 
in  which  the  authentic  dramatist  will  secure  effect 
out  of  the  interplay  of  dialogue  with  stage  possi- 
biUties.  The  Denison  family,  and  guests,  are  at 
dinner,  and  as  the  man  who  looks  after  the  dynamo 
has  been  accepted  on  the  same  principle  as  the 
guests,  that  of  true  hospitality — he  isn't  really 
an  electrician — the  lights  suddenly  go  out.  The 
ordinarily  placid  Lady  Denison  is  worried,  and 
hopes  it  isn't  going  to  be  one  of  his  bad  nights. 
The  lights  come  on  again,  and  she  has  no  sooner 
said  "  That's  better  "  than  they  go  out  afresh. 
This  depresses  her,  but  a  moment  later  the  lights 
recover,  have  a  series  of  spasms,  and  finally 
settle  to  work  again.  This  is  very  good  ;  as  good 
as  the  moment  in  Wilde's  play,  when  Jack,  having 
gone  out  of  the  room  in  great  excitement  to  find 
the  natal  hand-bag,  a  terrible  noise  is  heard 
overhead;  "It  is  stopped  now,"  remarks  Lady 
Bracknel,  and  immediately  the  noise  is  redoubled. 
We  all  catch  ourselves  in  these  little  acts  of  pre- 
mature congratulation,  and  the  recognition  of 
other  people  making  themselves  ridiculous  is 
always  pleasant.  In  addition,  Hankin's  is  a  touch 
of  the  truest  comedy  ;  a  great  deal  of  dialogue 
could  not  give  us  with  such  beautiful  precision 
the  full  amenity  of  Ufe  in  this  household  where 
charity  begins  at  home. 

But  Hankin's  plays  are  not  especially  notable 
for  their  good  ordering  of  the  stage.     He  put  up 

169 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

with  most  of  the  conventions  of  the  theatre  as 
he  found  them.  He  suffered  his  first  play  to  be 
printed  with  R.C.  and  L.C.  and  R.U.E.,  like  a 
proposition  in  Euclid  ;  because  he  was  frankly  con- 
tented that  his  play  should  be  acted  by  amateurs, 
and  amateurs  have  to  be  told  when  and  where  and 
how  to  come  on,  to  "  move  up  "  or  to  "  cross  "  or 
to  "  come  down,"  otherwise  they  would  not  be 
able  to  act  a  piece  at  all.  (Happily,  in  the  new 
collected  edition,  the  play  may  be  read  without 
these  things.)  Later,  of  course,  he  evolved  a  form 
of  literary  stage  direction  that  is  particularly  his 
own ;  something  more  must  be  said  of  this  in  a 
moment.  In  the  meantime  we  may  see,  by  a 
glance  at  any  one  of  the  plays,  that  Hankin  was 
content,  even  at  the  height  of  his  powers,  to  ask 
actors  and  producers  to  do  things  that  they  should 
not  be  asked  to  do  by  a  dramatist  who  has  full 
mastery  of  his  art.  In  The  Return  of  the  Prodigal 
there  is  a  love  scene  at  one  side  of  the  stage  while,  we 
are  told,  "  everybody  else  is  immersed  in  conversa- 
tion " — conversation  that  goes  nevertheless,  by  one 
of  the  most  popular  and  arbitrary  conventions  of 
the  stage,  unreported.  Shakespeare  has  no  stage 
directions  that  are  of  guidance  on  this  point,  but 
he,  of  course,  did  not  pretend  to  observe  the  new 
unity  of  the  stage  that,  with  its  retirement  within 
the  picture-frame,  has  come  by  general  consent 
to  be  desirable.  By  the  time  of  the  Restoration, 
however,  we  may  read  in  several  dramatists  the 
170 


ST.  JOHN  HANKIN 

direction,  *'  They  talk  in  dumb  show  " — that  is  to 
say,  one  pair  of  characters  has  been  made  to 
relapse  into  a  sudden  silence,  not  because  in  reality 
they  would  have  done  so,  but  factitiously,  in  order 
that  another  pair  may  have  the  centre  of  the 
stage.  This  expedient  of  convenience  is  a  charac- 
teristic part  of  the  Pinero  technique  ;  and  in  The 
Cassilis  Engagement  we  read,  sure  enough,  "  They 
converse  in  dumb  show  " — while  another  couple 
"  come  down  stage  "  and  engage  our  ear.  There 
is  no  question  of  right  or  wrong  in  this,  merely 
the  confession  that  the  dramatist  has  taken  the 
easiest  way  instead  of  conquering  an  unnecessary 
convention ;  for  "  to  conquer  an  unnecessary 
convention  is  one  of  the  greatest  delights  of  an 
art :  to  loyally  accept  and  work  within  a  necessary 
convention  is  no  less  a  delight  " — a  remark  that 
Mr.  Henry  Arthur  Jones  made  once,  but  did  not 
proceed  conspicuously  to  exemplify.  Much  depends, 
of  course,  upon  what  are  the  necessary  conventions. 
But  here  is  Hankin,  in  illustration  of  the  general 
willingness  we  have  found  in  him  to  be  upon  the 
side  of  good  sense  and  economy  in  technical 
matters,  doing  very  much  better  only  a  few 
minutes  earlier  in  the  same  play.  Major  War- 
rington and  Ethel,  it  will  be  remembered,  have 
just  been  having  a  rather  intimate  little  talk 
together.     "  Meantime  "  (we  read) 

Lady  Remenham  has  been  conversing  in  an  undertone 
with  Mrs.  Herries,  occasionally  glancing  over  her  shoulder 

171 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

at  the  other  two.  In  the  sudden  hush  which  follows  Wakring- 
ton's  movement  towards  the  fireplace,  her  voice  suddenly 
becomes  alarmingly  audible. 

Lady  Remenham.    Such  a  common  little  thing,  too  I 
And  /  don't  even  call  her  pretty. 

This  is  at  least  an  admission  of  the  claims  of  good 
technique,  and  an  honest  attempt  at  their  satis- 
faction ;  it  is  a  scene  that  need  not  distress  the 
best  of  producers.  In  itself — and  Hankin's  work 
is  full  of  instances  of  such  honest  good  workmanship 
— it  is  an  advance  on  anything  Wilde  saw  to  be 
necessary,  who  would  crowd  his  stage  with  con- 
versational groups  and  bring  out  one  after  another 
into  audibility  like  couples  circulating  on  a  merry- 
go-round  ;  while  any  necessary  business  that  there 
might  be  to  be  considered,  he  would  generally 
impart  quite  naively  in  a  soliloquy.  Hankin  is 
never  guilty  of  soliloquy — or  almost  never :  Janet 
de  Mullin  remarks  "  under  her  breath,"  it  is  true, 
"  Monty  Bulstead  !  engaged  !  "  a  lapse  which  gives 
us  a  bad  quarter  of  a  minute  in  a  play  that  is 
otherwise  well-written.  But  Hankin's  returned 
prodigal,  having  safely  secured  admission  to  the 
family  drawing-room,  and  everybody  having  run 
in  various  directions  in  search  of  restoratives,  does 
not  get  up  and  tell  us  all  about  himself.  Oh  no. 
He  takes  advantage  of  the  moment  to  "  raise 
himself  cautiously  from  his  recumbent  posture 
and  wring  out  the  bandage  on  his  forehead,  which 
he  finds  disagreeably  wet."  This  done,  he  hears 
172 


ST.  JOHN  HANKIN 

the  sound  of  returning  footsteps  and  ""^^^ 
his  fainting  condition."  Everything  about  the 
prodigal  is  revealed  in  due  order  and  with  a 
nroner  piquancy ;  this  moment  is  used  m  masterly 
feXn^nd  is  a  true  instance  of  Hankin's  faculty 
of  quktly  humorous  surprise.    It  is  a  moment  of 

^^^e^ra^nrgo'firth^  without  cons^ering  the 
general  question  of  stage  directions.    Every  play 
fhat  canle  read-(and  every  good  play  can  be  read 
make  no  mistake  about  that)-must  make  plain 
Tthe  reader  by  means  of  eommentary  upon  the 
words  and  actions  of  the  persons  all  those  things 
which,  in  the  theatre,  would  be  made  plam  to  the 
roectator  by  the  actor's  art  and  by  the  constant 
:^SSing^ervicc  of  the  stage     Drama  is  one- 
halt  a  matter  of  visual  demonstration :    a  blind 
man  sitting  in  a  theatre  cou  d  take  away  only 
one-half  of  a  true  play's  content ;    a»d Jo/e^^ 
the  bare  printed  words  of  a  play  is  to  be  in  the 
position  of  the  blind  man.    The  Action  of  the 
printed   stage   directions   is   to   supply   all   that 
drfterencc  between  what  would  be  apprehended 
bf  he  blind  man  and  what  would  be.apprehended 
by  the  spectator  with  the  whole  quintette  of  his 
senses  about  him     But  their  function  is  not  to 
upply    more.     Mr.    Shaw's    stage    directions    do 
supply  more ;  they  will  give  us  the  -PP-™"-  ° 
the  front  steps,  of  the  entrance-hall,  and  of  the 
staircase  of  a' house,  of  which  in  the  theatre  we 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

see  only  the  interior  of  one  room;  and  when  we 
get  to  this  room  the  stage  directions  will  describe 
It,  perhaps,  from  the  point  of  view  of  a  super- 
naturally  observant  sparrow  on  the  window-sill. 
Mr.  Shaw's  stage  directions  do  not  stop  short  of 
givmg  us  the  whole  flora  and  fauna  of  the  neigh- 
bourhood,  together  with  the  prevailing  political 
opmion,  and  the  amount  of  the  water-rate.     But 
Mr.  Shaw's  narrative  excursions  are  not  in  any 
strict  sense  stage  directions  at  all ;  they  are  delight- 
fully readable,  and  he  could  no  more  issue  a  plav 
without  them  than  he  could  issue  a  play  without 
a  preface.     Hankin,  who  did  issue  a  Play  without  a 
Preface,   hit  upon  a  very  happy  mean  between 
Mr.   Shaw  s  narrative  excursions  and  the  alpha- 
betical  efforts  of    the  school  whose    plays    look 
like  a  handbook  of  instructions  for  one  desirous 
of  becoming  proficient  in  the  Morse  code     His 
stage  directions,   besides  adding  to  our  pleasure 
by  the  neatly  pointed  wit  of  their  expression,  do 
really  achieve  their  true  function,  that  of  giving 
us    exactly,    or    almost    exactly,    what    we    miss 
through  not  seeing  the  play  in  the  theatre.     The 
best  moment  in  the  best  of  Hankin's  comedies  is 
thus  one  m  which  dialogue  plays  a  small  part. 
Ethel  Borridge,  bored  stiff  in  the  Cassilis  drawing- 
uT'^  ff  "^  rendered  quite  reckless  by  the  German 
ballad  Mabel  has  just  sung  very  prettily,  determines 
to  show  these  people  what  she  can  do.     She  plunges 
into  a  "  refined  ditty,"  in  which  the  Hankin  who 
174 


ST.  JOHN  HANKIN 

wrote  Lost  Masterpieces  has  caught  quite  perfectly 
the  style  of  the  less-than-first-rate  music-hall 
article.    The  effect  is  critical : 

Majob  Wabbington.    Splendid,  by  Jove  I    Capital  I 
That,  however,  U  clearly  rwt  the  opinion  of  tUrest  of  the 
lisJ^s,  for  the  song  has  what  is  called  a  "  mixed"  reception. 
TtZ^7fTtheZost  part,  had  onginally  settled  i^d^« 
iZ  Zir  places  prepared  to  listen  to  anything  which  was 
Tbe^ethem  wiSi  polite  indifference.    A  few  bars,  h<mev^, 
^meZ  cTvince  La  of  the  impossiUlityof  that  attitude. 
L^Y  REMENHAM,  ic/w  is  Sitting  on  th^  sofa  by  Lady  Mabch- 
l^Z  exchanges  a  horHfUd  glance  with  that  lady,  and  with 
MBS.  HbbbieI  on  the  other  side  of  the  r^xm.J^^"^  ^^/ 
uncomfortable.    The    Rectob    feigns    abstraction.     Mbs. 
CASSiis  remains  calm  and  sweet,  but  avoids  every  ones  eye, 
aZ^e  particularly   Geoffbey's,   who   looks  intensely 
mLTu.    But   WABBINGTON   cn^oys   himself  thoroughly 
Znd  as  for  Mbs.  Bobbidge,  her  satisfaction  is  unmeasured. 
She  beats  Hme  to  the  final  chorus,  wagging  her  old  head  and 
jl^  in  in  stent  Jan  accents,  finally  Jumping  up  from  h^ 
chair   clapping  her  hands,  and  crying  ^^  ThaVs  right,  Eth. 
Give'^amtL."    In  fact,  she  feels  that  the  song  has  been  a 
cZpZ^Zmphfor  hJ daughter,  and  a  startling  vindication 
TMjZins^s  good  opinion  of  her  powers.    Suddenly, 

Liver,  she  becJes  conscious  of  th.  '«>f ^f^f  ^^ofs 
mrrouildsher.    The  cheers  die  away  on  her  hps.    She  looks 

ZTtt^  room,  dazed  and  almost  f^^l;^Z'lIZen?n2 
reseats  herself  in  her  chair,  from  which  sJ^J^nsen  mhcr 
excitement,   straightens  her  wig,   and--there  is  an  awful 


pause. 


Here  we  are  told-very  well  told-everything 
we  need  to  know,  and  nothing  that  we  need  not. 
If  we  have  an  ounce  of  imagination  we  can  see 

175 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

the  whole  scene   for  ourselves;    but  no  foolish 
attempt  is  made  to  leave  nothing  to  the  imagina- 
tion.    To  understand   how  well   and   surely  this 
scene  is  done,  we  have  to  read,  not  only  in  the 
stage  directions  of  other  dramatists,  but  in  those 
of  Hankin  himself.     He  is  not  always,  as  we  have 
seen,  equally  sure  of  himself  :   if  he  had  been  quite 
as  conscious  as  he  might  have  been  that  the  burden 
of  the  dramatist's  directions  is  merely  What  the 
Actor  Has  to  Show,  and  nothing  else,  he  would 
hardly   have   set   Margery   Denison   the   task    of 
showmg  that  she  was  "  quite  unconscious  of  her 
mother's  agitation,  as  she  sat  too  far  from  her  at 
luncheon  to  notice  that  she  was  not  in  her  usual 
spirits."     Margery,  by  her  demeanour  in  the  draw- 
mg-room,   could  hardly  be  expected  to  show  all 
that.     No,  Hankin  is  here  frankly  telling  us  some- 
thing—as frankly  in  his  own  interpolated  person 
as  when  he  tells  us  somewhere  else  in  the  same  play 
that  Verreker  does  not  like  Hylton,  "  I'm  afraid  " 
This  IS,  however,  the  defect  of  a  quality.     Hankin 
really   did   beheve  in   the  drama   as   "the   most 
objective  form  known  to  art."    He  is  determined 
that  his  people  shall  stand  upon  their  own  feet  • 
and,  in  the  light  of  this  admirable  determination' 
his  affectation  that  he  knows  no  more  about  them 
than  does  the  reader  or  spectator  is  seen  to  be  an 
amiable  little  pose. 

Of  course  an  absolute  objectivity  is  as  impossible 
m  drama  as  in  any  other  of  the  arts.  Hankin 
176 


ST.  JOHN  HANKIN 

himself  is  not  for  ever  speaking  through  the  mouths 
of  his  people,  as  Mr.  Shaw  is,  reducing  them  to 
mere  raisonneurs ;  but  in  their  every  utterance 
there  is  something  of  his  own  sense  of  style  and 
form — his  people  bear  the  impress  of  their  author, 
or  they  would  not  be  his  people  at  all.  The  most 
realistic  of  artists  has  thus  to  put  shape  upon 
events  and  speeches,  or  he  is  no  artist.  It  is 
probable  that  Hankin  was  not  a  very  conscious 
realist ;  but  because  he  kept  character  in  the 
forefront,  and  refused  to  give  in  to  what  was 
sentimentally  expected  of  him,  he  was  able  to  make 
that  scene  of  Ethel  shocking  her  fiance's  drawing- 
room  as  truthful  a  scene  as  any  on  the  modern 
stage.  We  see  most  clearly  his  views  on  objectivity 
in  drama  in  the  essay,  already  quoted,  On  Happy 
Endings.  Being  content  to  represent  life,  and 
not  wishing  to  argue  about  it,  he  need  not  "  end," 
as  the  writer  with  a  thesis  wishes  to  end.  His 
plays  have  each  the  neatness  and  inevitability  of  a 
theorem  or  proposition,  but  at  the  end  of  them 
there  is  no  Q.E.F.  or  Q.E.D.  This  is  what  he  set 
out  to  do  with  his  plays  :  "I  select  an  episode  in 
the  life  of  one  of  my  characters  or  a  group  of 
characters,  when  something  of  importance  to  their 
future  has  to  be  decided,  and  I  ring  up  my  curtain. 
Having  shown  how  it  was  decided,  and  why  it  was 
so  decided,  I  ring  it  down  again.  The  episode  is 
over,  and  with  it  the  play.  The  end  is  '  incon- 
clusive '  in  the  sense  that  it  proves  nothing.     Why 

M  177 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

should  it  ?  "  Why  should  it,  indeed  ?  Does  not 
"Le  Misanthrope  "  of  Moliere  end  with  the  words, 
"  Come,  Madam,  let  us  leave  no  stone  unturned 
to  hinder  the  plan  he  has  in  view  "  ? — inconclusive 
words,  and  yet  we  are  left  in  no  discontent,  because 
the  play  is  certainly  over.  It  is  quite  a  different 
matter  from  the  ending  on  a  question  mark  (which 
is  thought  to  be  so  clever  just  now),  for  no  other 
reason  than  that  the  writer  has  not  skill  enough  to 
bring  his  play  to  a  proper  end.  Hankin,  who  took 
the  liberty,  before  he  wrote  plays  of  his  own,  of 
showing  in  his  Dramatic  Sequels  that  other  people's 
plays  need  not  have  ended  so  soon  as  they  did, 
showed,  in  his  own  turn,  that  plays  need  not  go  on 
so  long.  They  might  stop  short  of  wedding  bells. 
His  own  do,  invariably  ;  partly  because  to  end 
thus  pleased  his  amiable  cynicism,  partly  because 
to  end  thus  was  quite  right.  One  play,  his  first, 
he  spoiled  ;  after  first  begging  the  question  ("I 
wonder  how  you  two  ever  came  to  marry  ")  the 
courage  of  his  cynicism  failed  him,  and  he  flattered 
the  amateurs  by  reuniting  his  Constantia  and  his 
Dick.  Afterwards  the  endings  are  uniformly 
"  inconclusive  "  and  uniformly  right ;  the  disturb- 
ing person,  having  fluttered  the  dovecote — Eustace 
or  Verreker  or  Ethel  Borridge  or  Janet  de  Mullin — 
goes  out,  and  the  dovecote  settles  once  more  into 
its  lazy  and  unimaginative  peace.  The  country 
house  is  at  rest  again,  free  to  take  cold  baths 
and  to  shoot  partridges,  to  crochet  counterpanes 
178 


ST.  JOHN  HANKIN 

for  the  sick  and  to  manipulate  orphans  into 
asylums.  That  is  the  true  ending  for  the  people 
Hankin  chose  to  depict.  The  interesting,  dis- 
turbing people  in  such  circles  generally  do  dis- 
appear. There  is  nothing  more  manifestly  recog- 
nizable in  Hankin  than  the  truthfulness  of  his 
endings. 

The  chief  defect  in  Hankin's  plays  is  their  lack 
of  emotional  momentum.  His  comedy  is  as  minor 
as  that  of  the  Restoration  writers,  but  what  he 
makes  up  in  sincerity  they  made  up  in  splendid, 
spirited  speech.  "  How  pleasant  is  resenting  an 
injury  without  passion,"  says  Sir  Harry  Wildair,  a 
damnable  sentiment,  stated  quite  beautifully  ;  and 
Hankin's  people  always  do  everything  "  without 
passion."  Their  author  doubtless  felt  it  was 
pleasanter  so.  His  inability,  after  he  has  given 
his  people  life,  to  give  them  ardour,  does  not 
matter  much  until  we  come  to  Janet  de  Mullin, 
whose  tirade  against  her  family  sounds  a  little 
thin  and  tinny  for  lack  of  her  eagerness  in  life 
having  been  made  real  to  us.  Hankin's  last  play 
is  in  many  ways  his  ablest ;  but  on  the  title- 
page  of  his  first  play  he  wrote  a  line  from  Horace 
Walpole  :  "  Life  is  a  comedy  to  those  who  think,  a 
tragedy  to  those  who  feel,"  that  retained  its 
application  to  his  own  work  to  the  end.  For 
Hankin  thought  his  way  successfully  through 
most  of  his  comedies.  But  the  theme  of  The  Last 
of  the  De  Mullins  is  one  that  demands  more  feeling 

179 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

than  he  was  able  to  give  to  it.  "  Then  I  met — never 
mind.  And  I  fell  in  love  with  him.  Or  perhaps 
I  only  fell  in  love  with  love,"  says  Janet.  It  is  a 
subject  for  feeling  ;  but  we  feel  it  no  more  than  we 
feel  the  "  One  may  like  the  love  and  despise  the 
lover,  I  hope,"  of  Farquhar's  pert  Melinda.  It 
would  not  be  quite  true  to  say  that  Hankin  worked 
with  his  brain  alone  ;  numberless  touches  that  we 
recognize  for  their  emotional  truthfulness  would 
have  been  beyond  him  so ;  there  are  passages 
like  the  following,  with  sufficient  feeling  : 

Geoffrey  [picking  rose  and  bringing  it  to  Ethel].  A  rose 
for  the  prettiest  girl  in  England. 

Ethel.    Oh,  Geoff,  do  you  think  so  ? 

Geoffbey.  Of  course.  The  prettiest  and  the  best. 
[Takes  her  hand.] 

Ethel.    You  do  really  love  me,  Geoff,  don't  you  ? 

Geoffrey.    Do  you  doubt  it  ?     [Kisses  her.] 

Ethel.    No  ;  you're  much  too  good  to  me,  you  know. 

Geoffrey.    Nonsense,  darling. 

Ethel.  It's  the  truth.  You're  a  gentleman  and  rich, 
and  have  fine  friends,  while  mother  and  I  are  common  as 
common. 

Geoffrey  [firmly].    You're  not. 

Ethel.  Oh  yes,  we  are.  Of  course  I've  been  to  school 
and  been  taught  things.  But  what's  education  ?  It  can't 
alter  how  we're  made,  can  it  ?  And  she  and  I  are  the 
same  underneath. 

Geoffrey.  Ethel,  you're  not  to  say  such  things,  or  to 
think  them. 

Ethel.    But  they're  true,  Geoff. 

Geoffrey.    They're    not.     [Kisses   her.]     Say    they're 
not. 
180 


ST.  JOHN  HANKIN 

Ethel  [shakes  tier  head\.    No. 

Geoffrey.    Say  they're  not.    {Kisses  her.'\    Not! 

Ethel.    Very  well.    They're  not. 

Geoffbey.    That's  right.    [Kiss.]    There's  a  reward. 

The  last  thing  to  leave  Hankin's  hand,  The  Constant 
LoveTt  is  all  as  good  as  that,  a  beautifully  sustained 
trifle,  very  amiable,  rather  cynical,  and  very 
human.  Fortunately,  being  in  one  act,  it  has  only 
one  curtain.  Hankin's  final  curtains  are  always 
good,  but  he  often  fails  at  his  intermediate  curtains 
— because  of  his  lack  of  emotional  momentum. 
For  it  is  the  fact  that  criticism  may  test  a  dramatist 
most  surely  at  the  moment  when  he  is  ringing 
down  his  intermediate  curtain  :  it  has  merely  to 
ask  itself  the  question,  Do  I  want  this  play  to  go 
on  ?  Is  the  veil  that  is  coming  between  me  and 
this  uncompleted  world  almost  intolerable  ?  It 
should  be  (except  at  the  last;  when  its  very 
inevitability  should,  of  course,  be  satisfying). 
By  however  little  the  dramatist  may  have  left  the 
beaten  path  of  everyday  experience,  here,  never- 
theless, is  a  moment  that  must  have  been  so 
contrived  as  to  "  make  great  demands  on  one's 
curiosity."  With  Hankin,  it  must  be  said,  one  is 
not  so  anxious  as  one  should  be  for  the  play  to 
go  on.  Of  course  one  wants  his  plays  to  go  on — 
they  would  be  unreadable  otherwise,  or  unable 
to  hold  their  place  in  their  theatre  ;  which  em- 
phatically is  not  the  case.  But  one  is  a  little — 
what  shall  we  say  ? — subdued  in  one's  eagerness. 

181 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

Partly  this  is  because  the  plays,  by  their  nature, 
hold  no  great  surprise  ;  they  will  work  out,  we 
know  they  will  work  out — we  know  the  prodigal 
will  return  to  the  wilderness,  the  Cassilis  engage- 
ment end  only  one  way,  and  so  on.  Essentially 
the  pleasure  of  recognition  we  have  in  his  work 
is  of  two  kinds — the  pleasure  of  meeting  people  we 
know,  the  pleasure  of  seeing  the  episode  in  which 
Hankin  has  involved  these  people  come  to  its 
logical  end.  This  end  will  not  surprise  us  ;  there 
is  no  great  crisis  being,  at  each  curtain,  cleverly 
deferred.  It  is  a  patient,  amiable  enjoyment 
that  a  Hankin  play  offers.  But  it  might  well  have 
a  greater,  a  more  steadily  growing,  momentum  ; 
this  comes  in  only  with  true  feeling,  and  the  measure 
of  its  absence  in  Hankin  is  the  measure  of  the 
difference  of  his  drama  from  the  greatest. 

There  are,  nevertheless,  two  acts  quite  perfectly 
ended  :  the  first  act  of  the  De  Mullins,  with  its 
skilfully  contrived  passage  between  the  sisters  ; 
and  the  first  act  of  The  Cassilis  Engagement — 
"  Marry  her !  Nonsense,  my  dear  Margaret." 
These  are  evidence  once  more  of  the  good  things 
Hankin  could  do,  for  which  his  work  will  always 
be  valued.  He  could  be  quite  heartless,  as  when 
he  is  emphasizing  some  one's  "  fatuity,"  or  in 
the  uncharitable  episode  of  the  maid  Anson,  in  the 
charitable  comedy  ;  and  then  again  he  could  make 
real  a  Mrs.  Cassilis  or  an  Ethel  or  a  Mrs.  Jackson, 
which  no  merely  clever  man  could  do.  At  any 
182 


ST.  JOHN  HANKIN 

moment,  too,  he  may  demand  our  pleasure  by  the 
gently  reminiscent  skill  with  which  he  reminds  us 
that  if  we  breakfast  in  our  room  the  crumbs 
get  into  our  bed,  or  that  it  is  the  custom  after  a 
really  terrible  experience  to  thank  our  hostess  for 
such  a  pleasant  evening.  It  is  a  quality  that  is 
near,  at  least,  to  the  humour  that  is  universal. 
By  an  accident  of  commercial  organization  Hankin's 
work  has  been  kept  from  the  general  theatre,  but 
it  will  find  its  place  there,  and  it  will  keep  its  place, 
because  it  will  continue  to  give  this  pleasure. 


183 


VII 
GRANVILLE  BARKER 

INTO  the  English  theatre  there  came  with  the 
first  of  the  plays  of  Mr.  Granville  Barker  the 
deliberate  indication  that  here  was  a  writer 
whose  delight  it  would  be  to  attempt  the  difficult. 
There  is  a  popular  delusion  in  the  theatre  that  the 
diction  to  which  great  pains  have  gone  to  make 
perfect  will  impose  great  pains  in  its  turn  upon  the 
auditor ;  which  is  absurd,  because  the  only  test 
of  dramatic  diction  is  the  degree  in  which  it  can 
please  us  by  going  right  in  at  our  ear — the  more 
perfectly  it  is  shaped,  the  more  easy  it  will  be  of 
apprehension.  And  this  is  true,  not  only  of  its 
diction,  but  of  the  whole  constitution  of  the  drama. 
A  man  may  write  in  many  ways  and  leave 
us  ultimately  satisfied  that  we  have  taken  all 
his  meaning  in ;  but  when  a  man  speaks  his 
speech  must  be  such,  if  it  is  to  satisfy  us,  that 
our  ear  is  served  moment  by  moment  with  just 
so  much  as  the  ear  in  a  moment  can  take  in.  It 
is  a  confused  perception  of  this  obvious  distinc- 
tion between  the  literary  and  dramatic  arts  that 

185 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

kept  Browning  and  Meredith  out  of  the  Enghsh 
theatre  while  it  filled  it  full  of  a  kind  of  diction 
that  sacrificed  everything  to  readiness  of  appre- 
hension, and  of  a  kind  of  character  and  event 
that  had  become  unmistakable  through  long 
familiarity.  Nothing  could  be  more  familiar,  and 
therefore  more  readily  recognized,  than  the 
language  of  the  newspaper  we  had  just  thrown 
aside ;  and  the  English  theatre  was  contented 
to  reproduce  this.  But  while  famiUarity  is  one 
thing,  intimacy  is  quite  another.  We  shall  find 
the  art  of  Mr.  Granville  Barker  to  be  an  intimate 
art.  And  we  shall  find  that  his  drama  takes  its 
rise  not  in  a  belief  in  an  unnatural  ease  to  be 
attained  by  adherence  to  several  factitious  rules 
and  conventions,  but  in  a  desire  to  express  through 
the  theatre  as  much  of  his  own  personal  view  of 
things  as  can  possibly  be  given  that  form  and 
shape  which  are  necessary  to  effective  expression 
through  the  theatre.  In  its  deliberate  courting 
of  the  difficult — it  is  no  mere  casual  flirtation — 
Mr.  Barker's  is  a  definitely  experimental  drama ; 
we  may  say  that  he  is  the  first  definite  experi- 
mentalist in  the  modern  English  theatre. 

Now  a  man  whose  apprenticeship  to  the  theatre 
consists  in  speaking  other  men's  lines  upon 
its  boards  is  not  the  man  to  shape  his  own  work 
without  regard  to  the  theatre's  conditions.  Mr. 
Barker's  plays,  however  diverse,  have  in  common 
the  desire  to  do  something  at  once  larger  and  more 
186 


GRANVILLE  BARKER 

intimate  than  his  contemporaries  are  doing,  and 
they  have  also  the  technical  equipment  by  which 
alone,  in  any  art,  this  desire  will  be  safe  from 
frustration.  A  play  by  Granville  Barker  is  first 
and  foremost,  whatever  its  unorthodoxy,  a  play 
that  works.  The  play  about  the  young  lady  of 
family  who  married  with  the  gardener  is  the  play 
of  a  young  man  sometimes  remembering  Meredith  ; 
but  it  works  in  the  theatre — it  works  better  than 
"  The  Sentimentalists  "  of  his  master.  The  play 
about  the  defaulting  solicitor  who  died  in  honour 
and  left  to  his  son  an  inheritance  of  doubt  and 
difficulty  is,  with  only  so  much  stated,  a  good 
play  ;  but  in  the  hands  of  this  dramatist  it  took 
on  cheerfully  the  proportions  of  an  epic  of  middle- 
class  family  life  in  the  latter  days  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  and  remained  a  good  play.  The  play 
about  a  man  whose  usefulness  to  the  State  was 
sacrificed  rather  than  that  the  State  should  appear 
to  condone  the  private  fault  which  was  irrelevant 
to  his  public  usefulness,  became,  since  Mr.  Barker 
was  the  dramatist,  not  merely  a  picture  of  political 
society  in  the  Edwardian  era,  but  a  vehicle  for  the 
expression  of  a  whole  carefully  considered  plan 
for  the  endowment  of  education  and  the  dis- 
establishment of  the  Church.  Still,  it  carried  its 
burden  ;  it  was  not  by  any  inadaptability  to  the 
theatre  of  its  generously  imagined  materials  that 
the  play  fell  something  short  of  the  most  memor- 
able tragedy.     Mr.  Barker  next  wrote  a  comedy 

187 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

that  had  for  its  unity  nothing  less  than  the  conduct 
and  whole  implications  of  a  trade,  and  that 
managed  somehow,  between  its  first  act  and  its 
last,  to  look  much  of  contemporary  civilization 
in  the  face ;  and  who  will  be  found  at  this 
time  of  day  to  deny  that  The  Madras  Rouse, 
for  three-fourths  of  its  length  at  least,  gave  rise 
to  the  emotions  proper  to  comedy  ?  From  The 
Marrying  of  Ann  Leete  to  the  end  of  Act  Three  of 
The  Madras  House,  Mr.  Barker's  plays  work  :  that 
is  the  first  of  their  merits.  If  we  are  clear  about 
that,  we  may  proceed  to  see  how  they  work,  to 
what  end  in  pleasure  and  profit,  and  with  what 
significance  for  the  future  of  the  English  theatre. 

When  the  curtain  first  rose  on  the  earliest  of  the 
plays,  it  will  be  remembered  that  Ann's  scream 
that  came  through  the  darkness  of  the  garden  was 
prelude  to  the  following  conversation  : 

Lord  John  Carp.    I  apologize. 

Ann.    Why  is  it  so  dark  ? 

Lord  John.    Can  you  hear  what  I'm  saying  ? 

Ann.    Yes. 

Lord  John.  I  apologize  for  having  kissed  you  .  .  . 
ahnost  unintentionally. 

Ann.    Thank  you.    Mind  the  steps  down. 

Lord  John.    I  hope  I'm  sober,  but  the  air  .  .  . 

Ann.  Shall  we  sit  for  a  minute  ?  There  are  several 
seats  to  sit  on  somewhere. 

Lord  John.    This  is  a  very  dark  garden. 

Now  we  have  here  a  dialogue  of  a  deliberate 
nicety  that  is  pleasing  ;   we  have  the  true  question 

188 


GRANVILLE  BARKER 

and  answer,  not  always  in  the  closest  consequence, 
and  sentences  that  are  sometimes  left  in  the  air, 
as  we  sometimes  leave  them — things  that  are 
engaging  in  themselves  if  we  recognize  them,  and 
that  contribute  to  the  general  impression  of 
naturalness  none  the  less  if  we  don't.  They  are 
qualities  quite  apart  from  the  fact  that  Ann, 
the  young  lady  who  married  with  the  gardener, 
was  an  eighteenth- century  young  lady  who  was 
breathless  from  just  having  been  kissed ;  for  we 
have  only  to  remember  the  rise  of  the  curtain  on 
a  later  play  to  recall  that  the  conversation  of 
present-day  people  in  a  country-house  drawing- 
room  discovers  just  the  same  qualities.  Similarly, 
the  true  answer  to  Constantine's  "  You  are  a  poet, 
Mr.  State,"  is  Mr.  State's  answer,  "  I  never  wrote 
one  in  my  life,  sir ;  "  but  it  is  not  the  answer  another 
dramatist  would  have  thought  of.  This,  then,  is  the 
first  of  this  dramatist's  discoveries,  that  we  really 
speak  like  that,  rather  than  like  a  newspaper,  as 
Sir  Arthur  Pinero  would  have  us  think  that  we 
speak.  We  may  say  of  Mr.  Barker,  slightly 
varying  what  was  said  of  another,  "  He  has  an 
ear."  And  now  let  us  hasten,  having  used  the 
word  "  real,"  to  repudiate  the  idea,  inseparable 
from  the  word  in  some  minds,  that  Mr.  Barker  is 
either  a  phonograph  or  a  newspaper  man  with  a 
notebook.  It  is  a  curious  omission  of  these 
minds  to  fail  to  remember  that  it  is  the  newspaper 
man  with  his  notebook  who  produces  those  inter- 

189 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

views  in  the  papers  in  which  the  originals  cannot 
hear  themselves  speak.  In  fact,  the  reporter  is 
not  a  dramatist,  and  the  dramatic  realist  in  his 
dialogue,  astonishingly  as  the  news  may  come  to 
some,  is  not  a  reporter.  He  has  not  only  an  ear, 
he  has  an  imagination ;  and  what  the  ear  hears 
the  imagination  so  shapes  that  we  may  hear  it 
also,  as  it  occurred  and  as,  in  the  theatre,  we  may 
be  caused  to  believe  that  it  occurred.  When  Mrs. 
Ebbsmith,  who  was  very  fond  of  Mr.  Lucas  Cleeve 
and  lived  with  him  on  terms  of  the  closest  intimacy, 
said  what  she  thought  of  his  essay,  we  know  that 
if  the  expression  of  opinion  ever  occurred  it  did 
not  occur  in  the  least  in  that  manner,  and  so  we 
are  forced  to  believe  that  the  people  never  really 
did  occur  either.  So  subtle  is  the  interrelation 
between  truthfulness  in  small  things,  and  truth- 
fulness in  great.  It  is  this  interrelation  that  the 
realist  understands.  But  just  as  events  can  never 
be  made  to  exist  until  they  have  been  through  his 
imagination,  so  words  can  become  real  by  no  other 
process ;  until,  that  is,  they  issue  with  that 
imagination's  impress.  We  have  noticed  in  the 
first  persons  to  leave  Mr.  Barker's  hands  a  deliberate 
nicety  of  speech,  and  this  does  not  desert  his 
persons  whether  they  move  over  the  sward  at 
Markswayde  with  Mr.  Carnaby  Leete,  late  of  Mr. 
Pitt's  Cabinet,  or  sit  in  a  library  in  Queen  Anne's 
Gate  as  prospective  members  of  Lord  Horsham's ; 
or  merely  rotate  between  business  in  Peckham  and 
190 


GRANVIIXE  BARKER 

a  house  at  Denmark  Hill  in  salubrious  enjoyment 
of  a  view  of  the  Crystal  Palace.  It  is  the  impress 
by  which  they  are  Mr.  Barker's,  and  not  Sir  Arthur 
Pinero's  or  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw's.  It  is  only  a 
step  from  Ann's  "  I  had  rather,  my  lord,  that  you 
did  not  tell  my  brother  why  I  screamed — I  had 
rather,  Lord  John,  that  you  had  not  told  my 
brother  why  I  screamed,"  to  the  phraseology  of 
the  correct  Mrs.  Huxtable  when  she  learned  that 
Woking  was  a  cheerful  place,  "  I  had  thought  not 
for  some  reason."  The  step  is  a  hundred  years  or 
so  in  real  time,  but  only  some  ten  in  Mr.  Barker's 
mastery  of  comic  diction. 

The  distinguishing  characteristic  of  Mr.  Barker's 
comic  diction,  then,  is  its  intimacy.  He  can  give  this 
personal  quality  to  the  diction  of  another  dramatist 
when  he  "  paraphrases  "  Schnitzler's  "  Anatol." 
When  they  ask  Ann  in  the  dark  garden  whether 
she  is  blushing  after  being  kissed,  she  replies,  "  I 
am  by  the  feel  of  me  "  ;  and  we  are  often  next  the 
skin,  as  it  were,  of  Mr.  Barker's  people — sometimes 
almost  indecently.  That  engaging  soul  Mr. 
Huxtable  has  acquired  Macaulay,  Erbert  Spencer, 
and  Grote's  Istory  of  Greece  in  the  intervals  of  the 
drapery  business,  and  one  can  feel  the  physical 
twinge  of  satisfied  ownership  in  the  words,  "  I've 
got  'em  all  there."  Extraordinary  how  near 
we  come  to  the  little  beating  heart,  like  a  rattled 
pea,  of  dapper  Mr.  Booth  when  he  says,  "  One 
can't  lose  half  of  all  one  has  and  then  be  told  of 

191 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

it  in  two  minutes  .  .  .  sitting  at  a  table."  The 
dialogue  is  attended,  ever  so  closely,  by  a  small 
circling  humour.  "  Are  you  going  to  be  married  ?  " 
demands  brother  George  of  Abud  the  gardener, 
whose  reply  is  "  Not  especially,  sir."  "  A  boy  or 
a  girl,  Dimmuck  ?  "  asks  Ann  of  the  butler  when 
Mrs.  George  is  brought  to  bed,  and  the  answer 
comes,  "  Yes,  miss."  This  humour,  as  the  plays 
go  on,  takes  to  throwing  the  most  sudden  of 
little  lights,  sometimes  deep  into  character.  It  is 
illuminating  to  hear  of  brother  George  Leete  that 
he  is  "a  cork,  trying  to  sink  socially " ;  but  it  is 
positively  the  completest  possible  revelation  of 
the  whole  heart  and  soul  of  Mrs.  Voysey,  to  have 
her  begin  to  retire  for  the  night  and  pause  at  the 
door  to  say,  "  I'm  not  pleased  with  you,  Beatrice." 
The  speech  of  Mr.  Barker's  persons,  every  moment 
that  they  live,  is  for  ever  taking  some  such  twist  or 
turn  that  shows  us  some  new  facet  of  the  truth 
about  themselves,  as  when  Mr.  Huxtable  begins 
the  speech  to  his  errant  brother-in-law  which 
he  has  been  preparing  for  thirty  years,  "  And 
I  come  here  to-day  full  of  forgiveness  "...  and 
completes  it  with  "and  curiosity.  ..."  The 
lambent  humour  that  is  throwing  lights  on  these 
people,  the  hand  that  is  causing  them  to  turn  about 
and  display  themselves,  is  of  course  Mr.  Barker's, 
but  their  naturalness,  we  would  say,  is  their  own. 
This  most  essential  unity,  the  unity  of  character, 
is  preserved  so  perfectly  that,  if  we  are  reading  the 
192 


GRANVILLE  BARKER 

plays,  the  very  stage  directions  seem,  when  they 
refer  to  crumpled  Mr.  Booth  as  "  the  poor  old  thing  " 
or  to  Mr.  Huxtable  as  a  "  buffer,"  merely  to  have 
found  the  intimacy  infectious,  and  not  to  suggest 
the  showman  speaking  in  his  own  person  at 
all.  For  the  most  part,  it  is  the  perfect  stage 
direction  that  Mr.  Barker  gives  us — all  that  we 
ought  to  see,  as  Mr.  Barker,  skilled  man  of  the 
theatre,  sees  it.  This  matter  of  stage  directions 
is  important.  The  intimacy  of  Mr.  Barker's  art 
cannot  be  better  established  than  by  a  reference 
to  the  comfortable  office  of  Voysey  and  Son  at  the 
opening  of  the  fourth  act.  "  It  has  somehow  lost 
that  brilliancy  which  the  old  man's  occupation 
seemed  to  give  it."  That  is  how  we  have  got  to 
see  the  room ;  the  desire  that  we  should  see  it 
thus,  and  the  fact  that  Mr.  Barker  has  so  seen  it,  is 
an  example,  of  the  kind  that  one  would  emphasize, 
of  the  subtlety  of  this  dramatist's  theatrical  vision. 
He  has  an  eye. 

The  attempt  to  look  all  round,  which  we  have 
found  in  Mr.  Barker's  dialogue  and  character  is 
matched  by  an  equal  attempt  to  round  all  in,  which 
we  may  look  for  rather  in  incidental  detail.  The 
Voysey  Inheritance,  Waste,  and  The  Madras  House, 
in  their  different  fields,  are  triumphs  of  Rounding 
In.  The  marshalling  of  the  circumstances  by 
which  there  came  to  be  a  Voysey  inheritance  for 
Edward  to  shoulder  could  not  be  more  thorough 
if  Mr.  Barker  had  been  briefed  by  the  Crown.     In 

N  193 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

the  comedy  of  drapery,  the  dramatist's  zest  in 
the  facts  that  at  a  Peckham  emporium  the  two 
hundred  and  thirty-five  gentlemen  get  thirty 
pounds  a  year  allowed  them  if  they  live  "  out  " 
and  jam  roly-poly  if  they  live  "in,"  is  quite  equal 
to  his  zest  in  Mr.  Windlesham's  narration  of  the 
exact  manner  of  the  genesis  of  a  Parisian  cocotte's 
new  hat.  If  the  Conservative  party  could  not 
go  to  the  country  at  the  next  election  on  the 
proposals  presented  gratis  with  the  play  of 
Waste,  it  is  not  for  a  layman  to  say  why.  And 
this  brings  us  to  the  second  of  Mr.  Barker's  dis- 
coveries. 

The  plays  of  Mr.  Granville  Barker  make  it 
clear  that  the  creation  of  character,  which  is  the 
business  of  the  dramatist,  need  not  stop  short 
at  the  creation  of  individual  character  only, 
but  may  go  on  to  the  creation  of  what  one 
may  call  the  corporate  character  of  a  group. 
A  play  by  this  author  is  in  fact  a  series  of  dramatiza- 
tions of  these  group  emotions,  each  proper  to  the 
play's  progressing  effect.  Thus  the  true  business 
of  the  dramatist,  under  this  technique,  is  seen  to 
be  the  realization  of  the  moment's  mood.  In 
the  plays  of  the  dramatist  Tchekoff,  in  "  Uncle 
Vanya  "  and  "  The  Cherry  Orchard  "  in  particular, 
this  technique  is  carried  to  a  further  point  of 
conscious  achievement  than  Mr.  Barker  has  yet 
carried  it ;  but  really  the  unity  of  The  Madras 
House  is  just  as  much  a  matter  of  an  impalpable 
194 


GRANVILLE  BARKER 

presiding  influence,  independent,  one  would  almost 
say,  of  individual  character  or  incident,  as  is  the 
unity  of  "The  Cherry  Orchard."  There  is  every 
reason  to  beheve  that  Mr.  Barker  has  arrived  at 
this  subtle  dramatic  technique  entirely  for  himself.^ 
Evidence  of  what  is  meant  is  to  be  found  in  any 
piece  of  dialogue  that  we  may  take  at  random. 
This,  from  Waste : 

Frances  Trebell.  I  think  it's  a  mistake  to  stand 
outside  a  system.  Tliere's  an  inhumanity  in  that  amoimt 
of  detachment.  .  .  . 

Mks.  Fakrant  [brilliantly].  I  think  a  statesman  may  be 
a  little  inhmnan. 

Lady  Davenport  [toith  keenness].  Do  you  mean  super- 
human ?    It's  not  the  same  thing,  you  know. 

Mrs.  Farrant.    I  know. 

Lady  Davenport.    Most  people  don't  know. 

Mrs.  Farrant  [proceeding  with  her  cynicism].  Humanity 
achieves  .  .  .  what  ?    Housekeeping  and  children. 

Frances  Trebell.    As  far  as  a  woman's  concerned. 

Mrs.  Farrant  [a  little  mockingly].  Now,  Mamma,  say 
that  is  as  far  as  a  woman's  concerned. 

^  The  deUberate  nature  of  this  dramatist's  adherence 
to  the  moment's  reality  is  evinced  when  Edward — in 
reply  to  Mr.  Booth's  question  whether  he  was  present 
at  the  evening  at  Chislehurst — is  made  to  answer,  "  I  dare 
say."  Another  dramatist  would  have  taken  it  for  granted 
that  they  both  remembered  quite  perfectly  every  incident 
of  that  evening  two  years  ago,  for  no  better  reason  than 
that  in  the  theatre  only  an  hour  has  elapsed.  But  then, 
another  dramatist  would  have  made  old  Mr.  Voysey  die 
of  the  chill  he  took  before  our  eyes  in  the  second  act,  instead 
of  from  some  merely  unspecified  chill  taken  nine  months 
later 

195 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

Lady  Davenport.    My  dear,  you  know  I  don't  think  so. 

Mrs.  Fabrant.  We  may  none  of  us  think  so.  But 
there's  our  position  .  .  .  bread  and  butter  and  a  certain 
satisfaction  until  .  .  .  Oh,  Mamma,  I  wish  I  were  like 
you  .  .  .  beyond  all  the  passions  of  Ufe. 

Lady  Davenport  [with  great  vitality].  I'm  nothing  of 
the  sort.  It's  my  egoism's  dead  .  .  .  that's  an  intimation 
of  mortaUty. 

Mrs.  Farrant.  I  accept  the  snub.  But  I  wonder 
what  I'm  to  do  with  myself  for  the  next  thirty  years. 

It  matters  positively  nothing  to  us  what  Mrs. 
Farrant,  wife  of  a  minor  Cabinet  minister,  will  do 
with  herself  for  the  next  thirty  years ;  no  more 
than  whether  the  egoism  of  Lady  Davenport, 
whom  we  never  meet  again,  is  dead.  But  this 
is  not  to  say  that  any  touch  in  this  dialogue 
is  without  its  value,  for  these  remarks  that  lead 
apparently  out  of  the  play's  unity  instead  of  into 
it,  have  their  definite  purpose  in  the  creation 
of  mood.i  When  one  says  that  this  recognition  of 
the  needs  of  the  play's  momentary  mood  as  the 
primary  arbiter  in  a  play's  construction  is  the 
discovery  of  Tchekoff  and  of  Mr.  Granville  Barker, 
one  does  not  mean  that  the  recognition  is  not 
implied  in  the  work  of  much  earlier  dramatists, 
but  only  that  it  is  in  their  plays  for  the  first  time 

^  Mr.  George  Calderon,  in  writing  of  the  drama  of 
Tchekoff,  has  made  use  of  the  terms  "  centrifugal "  and 
"  centripetal "  for  the  dialogue  which  tends  away  from  and 
the  dialogue  which  tends  towards  the  play's  apparent 
centre. 
196 


GRANVILLE  BARKER 

quite  conscious  and  deliberate.  The  Voysey  In- 
heritance, The  Madras  House,  and  Waste  proceed 
in  the  knowledge  that  no  audience  can  gather  up 
and  carry  forward  every  detail  of  their  transactions 
legal,  political,  or  commercial-philosophic,  but 
that  every  such  detail,  whether  of  character  or 
incident,  is  justified  in  so  far  as  it  is  making 
smooth  and  inevitable  the  progress  of  the  audience 
from  mood  to  mood.  The  knowledge  that  this 
emotional  apprehension  is  all  that  is  really  neces- 
sary to  a  play's  full  appreciation  is  the  true 
solvent  of  the  delusion  regarding  dramatic  dialogue 
which  was  touched  on  at  the  beginning  of  this 
chapter.  In  a  play  by  Mr.  Granville  Barker  the 
things  that  emerge  serve  to  suggest  much  more 
beneath,  and  in  this  much  more,  apprehended  but 
perhaps  not  fully  comprehended,  the  play's  real 
unity  lies. 

This  building  of  a  play  cell  by  living  cell,  as  it 
were,  goes  a  good  way  to  achieve  a  living  organism. 
And  it  is  the  fact  that  Mr.  Barker's  plays  have 
extraordinary  life.  What  are  the  scenes  in  them 
which  remain  most  clearly  in  the  memory  ? 
Certainly  those  of  the  Voysey  family  summoned 
to  the  dining-room  to  hear  the  truth  about  an  old 
man  they  have  just  put,  with  every  circumstance 
of  honour,  into  the  grave  ;  of  the  meeting  of  pro- 
spective ministers  to  decide  what  is  to  be  done 
about  Trebell ;  of  the  third-act  gathering  beneath 
the  rotunda  of  the  Madras  House  whither  the 

197 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

American  financier  has  come  to  negotiate  a 
purchase  and  whence  he  does  not  depart  until  he 
has  enjoyed  as  stimulating  a  conversation  as  he 
can  remember.  Each  of  these  scenes  shows  clearly 
what  one  means  by  the  achievement  of  group- 
emotion.  They  show  the  art  of  Mr.  Barker  at  its 
best.  Each  person  in  them,  while  a  true  person 
studied  with  the  intimate  humorous  care  we  have 
noted,  lives,  not  for  his  own  sake,  but  for  the  sake 
of  the  scene.  This  is  the  triumph  of  dramatic 
characterization.  The  dining-room  at  Chislehurst 
pleases  as  a  number  by  M.  Fokine's  Ballet  pleases  ; 
it  is  the  perfection  of  individual  freedom  within  the 
perfection  of  unifying  control. 

And  we  may  go  on  to  say  that  Mr.  Barker's 
drama  ceases  fully  to  please  when  a  remark  or  a 
person  ceases  to  have  definite  value  in  the  creation 
of  mood.  Then  we  have  the  Loose  End.  There 
were  no  loose  ends  in  the  passage  quoted  from 
Waste,  because  that  women's  talk  all  made,  every 
word  of  it,  for  the  moment's  particular  reality. 
In  The  Voysey  Inheritance,  Major  Booth's  con- 
versational    opening,     "I'm     not     a     conceited 

man ,"  does  not  exist  for  its  own  sake  and 

degrade  him  to  the  ranks  of  the  "  silly  soldier 
men."  Major  Booth  Voysey,  the  soldier  son, 
exists  for  the  play's  sake,  and  never  becomes 
a  loose  end,  in  the  manner  in  which  Hugh 
Voysey,  the  artist  son,  becomes  a  loose  end. 
With  Hugh  Voysey's  conversational  fireworks 
198 


GRANVILLE  BARKER 

in  the  fourth  act,  and  with  Hugh  Voysey's 
divorce  in  the  fifth,  the  play  of  idea  takes  two 
steps  into  the  play  of  ideas.  The  dreadful  danger 
of  the  play  of  ideas  is  that  the  ideas  may  exist 
for  their  own  sake  instead  of  for  the  play's  sake, 
and  thus  become  nothing  but  loose  ends.  Now 
here  we  have  to  tread  cautiously,  lest  we  do  Mr. 
Barker  an  injustice.  It  is  necessary  to  distin- 
guish very  clearly  between  Mr.  Barker's  drama  and 
the  drama  of  certain  active  young  writers  who, 
while  they  may  have  a  superficial  appearance  of 
being  followers  of  Mr.  Barker,  are  in  fact  followers, 
at  a  considerable  distance  doubtless,  of  Mr.  Bernard 
Shaw.  For  example,  Mr.  Shaw  with  "  Man  and 
Superman  "  rendered  quite  popular  the  theatrical 
amusement  of  guying  one's  mother,  and  to-day 
a  whole  school  of  young  dramatists  is  busy  Guying 
its  Mother,  with  a  view  to  showing  how  very 
"  advanced  "  are  its  ideas.  But  Mr.  Barker  does 
not  guy  his  mother.  Mrs.  Huxtable  remains 
happy  in  the  possession  of  her  own  dignity,  while 
between  Mrs.  Voysey  and  her  reprehensible  old 
pirate  there  is  a  passage  at  the  end  of  the  second 
act  that  is  quite  beautiful  in  its  sympathy  and 
truth.  Nowhere  in  his  plays  is  this  dramatist 
betrayed  into  that  contempt  for  his  own  persons 
which  cannot  be  indulged  without  a  loss  in  sym- 
pathy, which  is  as  much  as  to  say  a  loss  in  art. 
Mr.  Huxtable  is,  quite  certainly,  a  "  lovable  old 
buffer  "  ;     a   dramatist   filled    with    the    "  idea  " 

199 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

that  the  coarseness  of  suburban  shopkeepers  is 
deplorable,  could  never  have  created  him.     But 
perhaps  the  completest  example  of  the  dramatist's 
sympathy  is  to  be  found  in  the    pathetic    little 
wrangle  m  the  waiting-room  of  Mr.   Huxtable's 
empormm,   where   there   is   the   most  exemplary 
dispensation  of  even-handed  justice.     Nor  is  Mr 
Barker  either  master  or  pupil  in  the  school  which 
seeks   to   show   its   superiority   to   the   common 
theatre  s  sentimental  handling  of  death  by  being 
funny  about  death.      -Life  does  not  cease  to  be 
funny  "  because  the  Voyseys  are  come  fresh  from 
a  funeral;   but  Mr.  Barker's  people  are  capable  of 
speaking,  as  Mr.  Shaw's  are  not,  "as  one  speaks 
of  the  dead." 

Mr.  Barker,  with  the  realist's  perception  of  the 
ludicrous  ever  waiting    close  upon  the  dignified, 
the   worthy  twisting  suddenly  to   show  the  un- 
worthy, the  little  thing  ready  to  trip  up  the  great, 
is,  however,  the  comic  ironist  always.     His  comedy 
is  the  comedy  of  contrast.     Verbally,  what  is  it 
that  makes  irresistible  in  its  context  such  a  simple 
thing   as   "That's   Buskin's   house,    is   it  ^     Yes 
I  see  the  chimney-pots  ?  "—we  may  leave  it  to 
M.  Bergson  to  analyse  the  precise  nature  of  the 
effect    of    Denmark   Hill   chimney-pots    upon   a 
physical  system  braced  up  to  Ruskin,  and  rest 
content  with  the  fact  that  we  laugh.     Visually 
how  comic  it  is  that  while  Miss  Yates,  with  her 
tragic   little   history,    should   be   going   out,    and 


GRANVILLE  BARKER 

while  Jessica,  with  her  proposals  for  luncheon, 
should  be  coming  in,  poor  Major  Tommy  should 
struggle  impotently  with  the  telephone  in  the 
foreground.  This  is  the  comedy  of  cross-currents 
— not  for  a  moment  to  be  confused  with  that 
horrible  breaking  up  of  the  unity  of  impression 
into  little  bits  which  some  dramatists  mistake  for 
contrast,  or  perhaps  for  Futurism.  To  come  to 
bigger  things,  the  plays  themselves  are  built  on 
contrast.  If  we  were  to  analyse  the  quality  of 
our  pleasure  in  the  first  act  of  The  Madras  House, 
it  would  be  accurate  to  say  that  it  gave  us  the 
pleasure  of  recognition,  with  the  pleasure  of 
surprise,  in  a  lesser  degree,  secured  verbally. 
Similarly  with  our  pleasure  in  the  third  act  of 
The  Voysey  Inheritance — only  here,  when  Mrs. 
Voysey  says,  "  I  have  known  of  this  for  a  long 
time,"  we  have  one  of  the  few  instances  of  Mr. 
Barker's  use  of  a  surprise  that  is  deeper  than 
verbal.  For  the  characteristic  of  Mr.  Barker's  plays 
is  a  humorous  irony  which  flickers  perpetually  but 
rarely  flames  into  surprise.  When  the  table  goes 
up  at  the  end  of  the  one- act  Rococo  and  the  vase 
is  smashed  as  a  result  of  the  eagerness  of  the 
parties  to  possess  it,  we  are  not  surprised  ;  but 
we  have  been  continually  delighted  by  the  contrast 
between  this  spirited  contentiousness  and  the 
hideous  uselessness  of  its  subject.  In  Waste,  it  is 
the  bungling  new  man  at  Lord  Horsham's  who 
contributes    most    powerfully    to    the    emotional 

201 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

intensity  of  the  scene  that  is  to  decide  upon  life 
and  death  for  Trebell ;   and  it  is  the  grave  interest 
of  the  two  statesmen  and  cousins  in  the  fate  of 
their  Aunt  Mary's  Holbein  which  assures  us  at 
the  end  of  the  scene  that,  whatever  it  may  hold 
for  Trebell,  life  will  still  go  on.     The  whole  vision 
of  the  Voysey  splendour  at  Chislehurst,  based  as 
we  know  it  to  be  upon  the  Voysey  depredations 
at  Lincoln's  Inn,  is  comically  ironic,  even  in  such 
little  things  as  the  discovery  of  Mrs.  Voysey  that 
the  Chinese  Empire  must  be  in  a  shocking  state, 
and  the  episode  of  Mr.  Booth's  Christmas  presents  ; 
until,  in  the  play's  last  fifteen  minutes,  the  author 
becomes  a  little  earnest  about  the  future  of  his  two 
young  people,  and  the  play's  unity  is  spoiled.     It 
is  almost  as  though,  the  play's  idea  being  over,  he 
thought  he  were  at  liberty  now  for  a  little  indul- 
gence   in    ideas.     Two    plays    (not    to    mention 
Prunella,   that  perfect  trifle)  come  to  their  end 
without  any  such  evil  indulgence.     The  play  about 
the  young  lady  who  married  with  the  gardener 
rather  than  with  any  of  her  father's  fine  friends, 
because,  said  she,  "  we've  all  been  in  too  great  a 
hurry  getting  civilized,"  is  a  genuine  play  of  idea, 
though  it  may  not  fully  persuade  us  ;  when  the  idea 
is  exemplified,  the  play  ends  with  its  final  exempli- 
fication, the  gardener  lighting  the  young  lady  up 
the   cottage   stairs   to   bed.     Waste  is   a   play   of 
idea,  in  which  we  have  seen  that  the  ideas,  admir- 
able as  they  may  be,  are  never  suffered  to  become 
202 


GRANVILLE  BARKER 

loose  ends ;  the  play's  end  is  the  idea's  final 
utterance,  one  and  inseparable,  "  Oh  .  .  .  the 
waste  ..."  But  with  what  degree  of  truth  may 
we  say  that  the  ending  of  The  Madras  House  is 
the  final  and  inevitable  exemplification  of  that 
play's  idea  ?  Here  again,  we  must  go  cautiously. 
If  we  have  been  accurate  in  our  analysis  of  the 
way  in  which  Mr.  Barker  builds  his  plays,  it  must 
be  plain  that  it  is  his  wish  to  leave  us  at  the  end 
not  with  the  memory  of  an  incident,  not  with  the 
memory  of  an  apophthegm  that  has  a  false  air  of 
being  inclusive,  but  with  the  memory  of  a  mood. 
A  mood  is  a  thing  that  may  take  a  little  building, 
and  Philip  and  Jessica,  even  more  than  Edward 
and  Alice,  have  an  air  of  being  conscious  of  their 
responsibility.  The  trouble  with  The  Madras 
House  is  that  the  mood  is  such  a  difficult  one  to 
create;  "for  really,"  says  the  dramatist,  "there 
is  no  end  to  the  subject."  The  end  to  The  Madras 
House  is  not  the  sale  of  the  Madras  House,  as  the 
end  to  Tchekoff's  "  Cherry  Orchard  "  is  the  sale 
of  the  cherry  orchard.  If  the  mood  we  are  to 
remember  as  the  curtain  falls  is  the  mood  of  Philip 
and  Jessica  "  happy  together,"  then  this  mood 
might  have  been  achieved  more  economically 
than  by  the  presentation  of  a  typical  twenty 
minutes  in  the  lives  of  this  nice  couple  who  are 
the  most  confirmed  of  chatters  about  the  health 
of  the  world.  A  dramatist  who  is  out  to  do  some- 
thing difficult  has  a  perfect  right  to  choose  some- 

203 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

thing  which,  Hke  most  true  ideas,  has  "  really  no 
end."  But  he  has  no  right  whatever  to  make  us 
tired  with  its  interminability  before  he  lets  us  go. 
We  are  not  made  tired  with  the  interminability  of 
life  as  it  stretches  before  Uncle  Vanya  and  Marina 
at  the  fall  of  the  curtain — only  infinitely  sym- 
pathetic and  happy.  But  that  is  because  the 
dramatist  has  succeeded  in  creating  a  definite 
idea  of  life  with  which  to  leave  us,  as  Hauptmann 
has  succeeded  in  "  The  Weavers."  Perhaps  in  The 
Madras  House  Mr.  Barker  has  not  succeeded  in 
creating  a  definite  idea  of  life,  but  has  succeeded 
only  in  its  episodic  illumination.  The  play,  although 
full  of  an  extraordinary  mastery,  is  not  the  most 
completely  successful  of  Mr.  Barker's  plays. 

All  the  work  of  the  dramatist,  viewed  in  its 
practical  aspect,  consists  in  the  skilled  deferring 
of  crisis,  but  there  is  such  a  thing  as  the  deferring  of 
crisis  too  long.  It  is,  one  fancies,  the  particular 
danger  of  Mr.  Barker's  dramatic  method.  In  each 
of  his  major  plays  there  is  a  man  who  (in  Alice's 
phrase  of  her  Edward)  "  loves  to  think  idly." 
These  men  who  spend  their  time  "  thinking  idly  " 
have  none  left  for  anything  more  than  a 
"  momentary  little  burst  of  passion  " — and  when 
it  comes  it  is  unexciting  to  us  as  Trebell's.  Mr. 
Barker's  failure  in  Waste  is  not  that  he  has  failed 
to  show  us  a  man  sharpened  as  a  weapon  to  his 
purpose  and  wasted  because  of  a  flaw,  but  that, 
weapon  and  flaw  together,  Trebell  leaves  us  as  cold 
204 


GRANVILLE  BARKER 

as  though  he  were  really  of  steel.  Now  we  have 
seen  that  the  apparently  idle  talking  of  Mr.  Barker's 
people  is  not  in  reality  idle,  but  is  contributing  to 
the  moment's  necessary  mood,  in  addition  to  being, 
incidentally,  often  quite  delightful.  But  Edward- 
Trebell-Philip  is  in  some  danger  of  becoming 
merely  a  new  form  of  raisonneur,  whose  function 
it  is  to  defer  the  crisis  by  "  shaking  his  fist  at  the 
world  in  general  " — (the  phrase  is  Jessica's  for  her 
Philip).  Mr.  Barker's  people  are  very  much  inter- 
ested in  the  world  ;  they  love  to  ask  questions  of  it. 
This  is  the  ground  for  the  charge  of  self-conscious- 
ness against  them.  But  they  are  not  so  much 
over-conscious  of  themselves,  which  is  a  horrid  fault, 
as  over-conscious  of  their  world.  The  world  is  an 
abiding  presence  to  them,  not  as  it  is  to  simple 
people,  such  as  Synge's  people,  by  contrast  with 
their  own  small  piece  of  it ;  not  as  it  is  to  Pinero's 
people,  who  are  eternally  concerned  about  how 
their  reputations  will  look  in  the  eyes  of  their 
"  little  parish  of  St.  James's " ;  but  as  it  is  to 
sophisticated  and  sententious  people  who  join 
societies  for  the  purpose  of  taking  the  world  under 
their  wing  and  keeping  its  feathers  tidy.  Does 
not  Philip  find  it  a  farmyard  world  ?  Even  Major 
Hippisley  Thomas,  that  plain  man,  goes  through 
life  conscious  that  this  is  a  damned  subtle  world. 
Jessica,  that  nice  woman,  finds  it  "a  terrible 
world — an  ugly,  stupid,  wasteful  world  ;  a  hateful 
world."    Edward-Trebell-Philip    comes    near    at 

205 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

times  to  uttering  the  national  question,  What 
Are  You  Going  To  Do  About  It  ?  of  the  great  people 
Mr.  Barker  himself  has  satirized  deliciously  in 
Mr.  Eustace  Perrin  State.  But  for  the  most 
part,  we  may  conclude,  Mr.  Barker  is  on  the 
side  of  the  world,  and  makes  clear  very  humor- 
ously his  belief  that  it  knows  its  own  business 
best. 

We  shall  not  fully  understand  the  mastery  this 
dramatist  has  over  the  technique  of  his  art  until 
we  have  compared  him  with  others.  Ibsen  him- 
self may  be  caught  hammer  in  hand  in  the  act  of 
driving  home  a  point ;  telling  us  something  we 
must  not  miss,  that  is  to  say,  with  an  emphasis 
that  does  his  belief  in  us,  and  in  the  art  of  the 
theatre,  no  service.  Over  and  over  again  in 
Waste  there  are  things  to  be  told  just  as  essential 
to  the  play's  understanding,  and  the  dramatist 
is  so  secure  of  our  attention  in  the  theatre  that  he 
has  to  give  it  no  more  than  the  delicatest  flick. 
There  comes,  "  But  since  Mrs.  O'Connell  is  dead 
what  is  the  excuse  for  a  scandal  ?  "  and  that  is  all 
we  know  and  all  we  need  to  know.  There  was  a 
time  in  the  English  theatre,  not  so  long  before, 
when  the  information,  lest  we  overlooked  it,  would 
have  been  given  to  us  in  this  fashion  : 

Lord  Cantelupe.    But  since  Mrs.  O'Connell— 
Farrant.    Mrs.  O'Connell  ? 
Cantelupe.    — is  dead — 
Farrant.    Dead  ! 
206 


GRANVILLE  BARKER 

Lord  Horsham        ^ 

Blackborough         j-  [together].    Dead  1 

Wedgecroft  J 

Farrant.    Mrs.  O'Connell  dead  ! 

Cantelupe.    — What  is  the  excuse  for  a  scandal  ? 

For  the  technical  improvement,  at  least,  in  the 
contemporary  English  drama,  the  credit  is  more 
Mr.  Granville  Barker's  than  any  other  man's. 


207 


VIII 
HUBERT  HENRY   DA  VIES 

MR.  HUBERT   HENRY   DAVIES    is   the 
genre-painter  in    the    English    theatre. 
He   entered   it   in    the    same    year    as 
Hankin  did,  but,  since  his  own  work  is  happily 
far  from  done,  his  place  is  perhaps  not  so  clearly 
recognized,   and  certainly  is  not  to  be  so  con- 
clusively appraised.     And  yet  it  is  quite  perfectly 
his    own ;     for    no    other    dramatist    could    have 
written  The  Molliisc.     Hankin  might  have  written 
it,  in  the  sense  that  its  idea  is  one  that  might  have 
come  to  him,  but  he  would  not  have  written  the 
same  play.    While  he  wrote  it  more  wittily,  perhaps, 
he  would  not  have  achieved  quite  the  same  perfect 
form ;    and  this  dramatist's  peculiar  tenderness, 
even  in  mockery,  is  not  like  Hankin  at  all.     Nor 
has  Barrie  written  an  artificial  comedy  that  is  at 
the  same  time  so  completely  a  comedy  of  character. 
When  we  have  said  that  it  is  not  like  any  one  of 
his  more  immediate  competitors,  we  have  but  said 
that  Mr.  Hubert  Henry  Davies  is  an  artist,  whose 
plays  are  the  dramatic  expression  of  a  personality 

o  209 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

that  is  his  own.  In  a  theatre  where  successes  are 
made  by  pooHng  one's  abihties  and  dipping 
generously  from  the  common  stock,  this  dramatist 
has  preferred  to  be  himself  and  to  be  different ; 
and  his  happiness  is  the  happiness  of  Sir  James 
Barrie,  that,  doing  the  work  he  has  wished  to  do, 
he  has  yet  found  it  to  be  fitted  to  the  theatre's 
most  immediate  needs. 

For  the  characteristic  of  the  drama  of  Mr. 
Hubert  Henry  Davies  is  that  it  accepted  the 
theatre  as  it  found  it.  In  his  first  play,  Mr.  Davies 
accepted  too  much ;  but  even  Mrs.  Gorringe's  Neck- 
lace, while  it  speaks  to  us  of  little  save  of  its  author's 
general  aptitude  for  comedy,  speaks  in  the  tones 
that  are  his  own.  The  play's  framework,  that  is 
anybody's  ;  Mrs.  Gorringe's  necklace  may  well  have 
been  hired  out  over  the  same  counter  as  Lady 
Windermere's  fan.  But  what  could  be  clearer 
than  that  it  is  not  Mrs.  Gorringe's  necklace  that 
has  caught  the  fancy  of  the  dramatist,  but  Mrs. 
Gorringe  ?  Who  stole  the  necklace,  we  do  not 
care  at  all ;  but  we  care  very  much  for  Mrs. 
Gorringe's  reconstruction  of  the  scene  of  the 
theft,  with  the  assistance  of  the  furniture  in  the 
drawing-room  : 

Mrs.  Gorringe  \rises\.  I  don't  know.  I  can't  think. 
[Speaks  volubly  as  she  moves  about  describing  the  scene.]  I  went 
to  my  room  when  I  came  in.  You  know  how  the  dressing- 
table  stands — as  if  it  were  there  [points  to  a  table]  and  the 
door,  of  course,  is  like  this.  [Indicates  the  door,  goes  toxvards 
210 


HUBERT  HENRY  DAVIES 

it,  opens  it,  goes  just  outside,  and  tfien  comes  in  again.]  Well, 
I  came  in  at  the  door  just  as  I  am  coming  in  now.  Of 
course  I  had  my  hat  on.  I  closed  the  door  [closes  the  door 
and  walks  towards  the  imaginary  dressing-table,  talking  aU 
the  time.]  Then  I  crossed  over  to  the  dressing-table  in 
quite  an  ordinary  manner.  Just  as  I'm  doing  now.  [Stands 
before  the  imaginary  dressing-table.]  Well,  I  looked  into  my 
jewel-case.  I  wanted  to  get  some  rings.  These  rings,  in 
fact.  [Bends  her  hand  to  show  her  rings.]  I  thought  it 
looked  diflferent  from  usual.  I  couldn't  think  what  it  was 
at  first,  but  I  remember  saying  to  myself,  "  Well,  that's 
funny  ! "  Then  all  at  once  it  flashed  across  me,  and  I 
clasped  my  hands  and  exclaimed  [clasps  her  hands 
dramatically] :  "  Great  heavens,  my  diamond  necklace 
has  gone  !  "  [Drops  the  dramatic  pose  and  tone.]  Just 
like  that. 

We  like  this  circumstantial,  feather-headed  lady, 
and  when,  in  the  second  act,  we  begin  to  be  con- 
scious that  she  is  making  preparation  to  enact  her 
scene  of  reconstruction  all  over  again,  we  like  her 
still  more  ;  and  not  only  like  her  still  more,  but 
begin  to  see  that  we  have  here  a  dramatist  with 
a  quite  exceptional  sense  of  form.  Nor  is  Mrs. 
Gorringe  a  mere  shaving  from  the  floor  of  Wilde's 
workshop,  any  more  than  her  hostess  Mrs.  Jardine, 
who,  when  the  theft  is  announced,  jumps  from  the 
postulate  that  it  must  be  one  of  the  servants  to 
the  hypothesis  that  it  is  Pipkin — "We  haven't  had 
Pipkin  long,  and  she's  always  looking  out  of  the 
window.  I  shouldn't  wonder  if  she  stole  it  " — 
an  hypothesis  which  in  her  next  utterance  has 
astonishingly  come  to  be  invested  with  the  sanctity 

211 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

proper  to  fact.  Wilde  had  a  nice  sense  of  the 
comedy  value  of  the  little  things  of  every  day ; 
but  he  left  this  dramatist  to  have  fun  with  a 
telegram,  and  to  write  this  passage,  so  intimately 
laughable,  about  its  mysterious  dispatch  : 

Mrs.  Jaedike  [to  Mrs.  Gorringe,  as  she  goes  towards  the 
door].  Are  you  going  to  send  the  h'm  h'm  about  the 
h'm  h'm  ? 

Mrs.  Gorringe.    H'm  h'm. 

CoLOKEL  Jardike.    What's  h'm  h'm  and  h'm  h'm  ? 

In  his  next  play  Mr.  Davies  has  fun  with  a 
lunch-basket,  fun  with  an  unoccupied  house,  fun 
with  another  little  old  lady  who  has,  God  bless 
her,  very  poor  and  unhappy  brains  ;  and  the  form 
is  now  the  form  proper  to  comedy — no  more  stolen 
necklaces,  no  more  dropped  handkerchiefs,  no  more 
suicides  to  make  way  for  sudden  happiness  at  the 
curtain's  fall.  Cousin  Kate  is  still  artificial  comedy, 
but  artificial  comedy  of  a  most  curious  and  dis- 
arming intimacy.  What  could  be  better  than  the 
play's  beginning  ? — we  are  genuinely  interested  in 
this  "  rather  helpless  little  family,"  and  prepared 
to  be  interested  in  the  visiting  Kate.  And  what 
could  we  hear  about  Heath  Desmond  that  would, 
in  spite  of  his  apparent  infidelity,  dispose  us 
towards  him  better  than,  from  Mrs.  Spencer,  that 
"  he  used  to  get  me  quite  hysterical  every  Sunday 
night  at  supper  "  (those  Sundays  that  were  in 
theory  observed  so  solemnly)  ?  That  Cousin  Kate 
212 


HUBERT  HENRY  DAVIES 

is  artificial  comedy,  in  spite  of  its  atmosphere  of 
pleasant  truthfulness,  is  evident  of  course  at  the 
end,  when,  in  order  to  leave  the  way  clear  for  Kate 
and  Desmond,  Amy  is  handed  over  to  "  that 
locum  tenens " — a  conclusion  emotionally  un- 
justifiable as  the  conclusion  to  the  comedy  which 
went  before. 

Nor  was  there  anything  between  Cousin  Kate  and 
The  Molhisc  to  prepare  one  for  a  comedy  that  was 
quite  perfect ;  but  that  is  what  The  Molhisc^  in 
its  own  genre,  is.  That  Mr.  Davies  added  to  an 
eye  for  the  little  things  of  character  an  ear  for  the 
little  things  of  speech,  one  knew  ;  that  he  was 
essentially  a  man  of  the  theatre  one  had  only  to 
remember  the  scene  of  Mrs.  Gorringe's  exits  and 
entrances,  or  the  opening  moments  of  Cousin  Kate 
before  a  word  was  spoken,  to  be  certain.  Clearest, 
perhaps  of  his  qualities,  was  a  feeling  for  form ; 
a  feeling  that  the  theatre,  just  as  it  was,  was  good 
enough  to  do  neater  and  more  economical  work  in 
than  the  theatre  men  were  doing.  Well,  The 
Mollusc  is  the  perfectly  effective  and  delightful 
expression  of  all  these  qualities.  It  is  an  artificial 
comedy  of  the  most  engaging  naturalness  ;  it  is 
an  entertainment  of  the  theatre  that  is  made  up 
most  economically  out  of  the  contributions  of  only 
four  persons ;  it  is  a  beautifully  sustained  trifle 
that  is  not  too  brilliant  to  be  intimate,  and  not 
too  superficial  to  be  searching.  How  certainly  is 
its  genesis  in  character  !     There  is  imbroglio,  there 

218 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

is  even  intrigue  ;  but  these  things,  we  are  sure, 
are  the  inevitable  outcome  of  the  Uttle  lady  who 
is  the  comedy's  centre.  This  comedy  is  not 
"  invented,"  not  "  built  up,"  it  is  hardly  even,  like 
Hankin's,  a  comedy  of  idea ;  it  is  a  kind  of  sudden 
sublimation  of  all  that  is  most  amusing  in  the 
vague,  delightful  women  the  dramatist  had  been 
drawing.  Given  the  thought  of  a  "  mollusc," 
the  dramatist's  task  was,  as  though  she  were  a 
butterfly  and  not  a  bivalve,  to  pin  her  down.  And 
this  dramatist  pins  her  down  with  a  touch  that  is 
at  once  firm  and  gentle,  a  kind  of  affectionate 
relentlessness — the  best  of  all  touches  for  comedy. 
There  is  subtlety  in  his  comic  conception  : 

Baxter.    Is  moUuscry  the  same  as  laziness  ? 

Tom.  No,  not  altogether.  The  lazy  flow  with  the  tide. 
The  mollusc  uses  force  to  resist  pressure.  It's  amazing 
the  amount  of  force  a  mollusc  will  use,  to  do  nothing, 
when  it  would  be  so  much  easier  to  do  something.  .  .  . 

And  so  we  have  the  comedy,  the  taking  in  hand 
of  a  mollusc,  and  the  force  she  uses  to  resist  being 
taken  in  hand.  It  is  the  comedy  of  inertia. 
Throughout  the  first  act,  inertia  is  seen  winning 
all  along  the  line.  In  the  second  act,  inertia  wins 
again,  in  a  pitched  battle.  In  the  third  act, 
inertia  is  shaken  ;  a  miracle  !  the  mollusc  takes 
up  her  bed  and  walks.  But  do  these  miracles 
last  ? — that  is  the  amused  doubt  we  are  left  with 
as  the  curtain  falls.  The  mollusc  will  be  a  mollusc 
still  the  moment  this  rude  invading  force  has  with- 
214 


HUBERT  HENRY  DAVIES 

drawn,   taking  the  pretty  governess  with  him; 
and   her   husband   will   be   quite   happy   m   her 

moUuscry.  .i,       4.u  + 

Now  nothing  could  be  more  obvious  than  that 
this  is  a  "  conventional  "  comedy  ;   the  status  quo 
disturbed   by    a   breeze   from   the   Colonies,    the 
pretty  governess,  the  parts  "  written  for  actors 
(oh,  yes,  certainly  Mrs.  Baxter  was  written  for 
an  actress).     But  not  written  to  order.     One  does 
not  conceive  the  comedy  of  inertia  to  order.     One 
waits  and,   God  willing,   it   comes.     Mr.   Hubert 
Henry  Davies  waits,  and  these  ideas  do  come  to 
him.     When  he  has  not  waited,  they  have  not  come, 
and  all  his  care  and  humorous  sympathy  have  not 
made  these  plays  into  Molluscs.    He  waited  for 
Doormats,   however,   and  Doormats  came.     There 
is  a  kind  of  play  than  which  nothing  is  more 
stupid,  and  that  is  the  kind  of  play  that  calls 
itself  a  fire-screen  or  a  pen- wiper  in  the  expectation 
that  we  shall  pay  our  money  to  find  out  what  is 
meant.     We  are  allowed  with  ostentation  to  find 
out  what  is  meant  generally  just  before  the  fall  of 
the  first  curtain,   and  for  all  else  that  the  play 
holds  we  might  as  well  leave  at  that  point.     This 
kind  of  play  is  a  fraud  and,  one  regrets  to  say,  a 
common  fraud;    or,  if  you  like,  a  trick;  a  trick 
to  give  freshness  and  "  originality  "  to  a  piece  that 
has   been   written   to   order.     The   plays   of   Mr. 
Hubert  Henry  Davies   are   not  of  this   number. 
Nothing  could  be  more  delicate  than  the  art  with 

215 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

which  we  are  told  about  molluscs;    and  to  leave 
the  theatre  when  we  have  been  told  would  be 
quite  impossible,  because  that  is  not  the  play's 
secret— the  play's  secret  is  the  wonders  in  the 
heart  of  Mrs.  Baxter.     There  is  no  trick  about 
Ihe  Mollusc,  It  is  a  comedy  of  character.     And 
Doormats   would    be    a    comedy   of   character   of 
equal  mterest  and  charm  even  supposing  there 
were  no   third-act  revelation   of  what   the   title 
means.     This  is  not  to  say  that  the  play's  title  is 
an  adventitious  label,   carelessly  or  calculatingly 
tacked   on.     The   dramatist   has   chosen   to  give 
unity  to   his   comedy  in   his  own   way,   that  is 
all.     It    is    the    comedy    of    "dominants"    and 
recessives,"  and  if  Professor  Bateson  of    Cam- 
bridge  University   had   written  it,    no   doubt   he 
would  have  given  it  a  more  scientific  name.     But 
Mr.  Davies'  art  prefers  the  more  homely  analogy 
of  the  doormat  and  the  boot.     Could  anything  be 
more  delicate  than  the  manner  of  its  announce- 
ment ? 

Josephine  It's  not  that.  It  has  nothing  to  do 
with  strength  or  weakness.  Some  people  have  a  genius 
for  gmng.  Others  a  talent  for  taking.  You  can't  not  be 
whichever  kind  you  are,  any  more  than  you  can  change 
your  sex.  You  and  I  are  amongst  those  who  must  give. 
[Quaintly,  as  she  resumes  her  sewing.]  Doormats  I  always 
call  them  to  myself. 

Noel.  I'm  not  a  doormat— not  usually— not  in  mv 
t^tTher""''*  '"  ""^  '^^^"''^'  ^'^^  """"'^  people-only 
216 


HUBERT  HENRY  DAVIES 

Josephine.  Every  doormat  is  not  everybody's  doormat. 
But  everybody  is  either  a  doormat — or  else — ^the  thing 
that  tramples  on  the  doormat. 

Noel  [suggests  vaguely].    A  boot ! 

Josephine.  Yes.  I  always  wanted  a  name  for  them. 
Leila  is  a  boot.  So  is  your  Uncle  Rufus.  They  can't 
help  it.  Just  as  every  one  is  either  a  man  or  a  woman — 
not  in  the  same  degree,  of  course — but  there  are  men  and 
toomen  .  .  .  [illustrating  with  her  hands]  ...  at  either 
end,  as  it  were,  of  a  long  piece  of  string ;  very  mannish 
men  at  one  end  and  very  womanish  women  at  the  other. 
Then — as  you  go  along — men  with  gentler,  what  we  call 
feminine  qualities — and  women  with  masculine  quaUties 
— some  with  more  and  some  with  less — right  along — till 
you  come  to  a  lot  of  funny  httle  people  in  the  middle 
that  it's  hard  to  tell  what  they  are.  Just  so,  it  seems  to 
me,  is  every  one  a  more  or  less  pronounced  doormat  or 
boot. 

Could  anything  be  nicer  or  more  free  from 
self-consciousness  after  the  charming  last-act 
development  of  this  philosophic  distinction,  than 
the  humour  of  its  ready  adoption  into  the  con- 
versation, just  once  or  twice  before  the  play  ends  ? 
It  is  such  a  serious  little  conversation — serious  to 
A\mt  Josephine  as  well  as  to  Noel  that  Leila 
should  tread  upon  him  and  upon  their  marriage  ; 
and  it  is  so  seriously  that  Noel  says,  with  half  his 
mind  engaged  with  Leila  in  the  next  room,  "  She 
wasn't  always  a  boot,"  and  so  seriously  that 
Josephine  replies,  "  Oh,  my  dear  !  that's  where 
they  are  so  clever.  Leila  wanted  your  love,  so 
she  set  to  work  the  surest  way  to  gain  it.  She 
pretended  to  be  a  doormat."  .  .  .  And  again,  just 

217 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

the  flash  of  higher  spirits  from  Noel  at  the  end, 
of  Captain  Maurice  Harding,  when  Leila  has 
found  that  if  she  is  to  go  off  with  him  and  leave 
her  husband  she  is  not  to  go  on  her  own  terms — 
"He's  a  boot."  To  which  Leila's  reply  is,  "  Oh, 
don't  talk  nonsense " — she  isn't  in  the  little 
secret,  she  doesn't  know  what  a  boot  has  to  do 
with  it,  she  can't  share  the  flash  of  memory  that 
is  ours  as  well  as  Noel's  ;  for  it  is  no  more  than 
that,  by  Mr.  Davies'  delicate  art,  no  more  than  a 
shared  recollection  whose  perfect  naturalness  has 
nothing  of  the  didactic,  nothing  of  the  curtain- 
warning  epigrammatic,  nothing  for  a  moment  that 
has  to  be  "  rubbed  in." 

And  now  to  substantiate  our  statement  that, 
doormats  or  no  doormats,  boots  or  no  boots,  the 
comedy  of  dominancy  is  a  good  one.  Again  it  is, 
if  you  will,  a  "  conventional "  comedy — the 
husband,  the  wife,  the  second  man,  the  pair  of 
old  people,  the  marriage  that  is  threatened,  the 
marriage  that  is  saved  just  in  time  ;  an  end  that 
is  a  little  arranged  perhaps,  but  fundamentally 
truthful.  But  how  perfect  the  unity  that  is 
secured  by  the  old  people  being  just  such  a  pair, 
dominant  and  recessive,  as  the  young  people, 
only  the  other  way  round  ;  how  inevitable  our 
quiet  pleasure  in  waiting  for  the  recessives,  in  the 
third  act,  to  put  their  heads  together  ;  how  good 
the  surprise  by  which,  when  wife  and  willing-to-be 
lover  come  to  the  husband  to  put  before  him  their 
218 


HUBERT  HENRY  DAVIES 

scheme  for  going  off  together  so  nicely  cut  and 
dried,  the  wife  finds  her  new  partner  to  be  a 
dominant  also,  and  that  she  doesn't  like  at  all! 
How  natural,  too,  all  through,  the  humour  which 
reveals  Uncle  Rufus  in  all  his  stubborn  old 
dominancy,  very  much  in  the  background  although 
he  takes  such  repeated  care  to  put  himself  in  the 
front.  The  comedy  has  just  these  five  people, 
and,  if  we  except  Captain  Harding,  who  has  not 
much  to  do  except  look  like  a  captain  and  come 
out  as  a  dominant  at  the  right  time,  each  one  of 
them  is  as  firmly  and  simply  and  yet  subtly  drawn 
as  The  Mollusc's  four.  Everything  is  done  with 
intimacy ;  what  could  be  better  done  than  this  ? 

Leila.  Noel !  Don't  get  up,  Aunt  Josephine  !  [Coming 
doum  to  Noel  with  the  card.]  Noel,  dear,  this  man  has  called 
to  see  you.     [She  offers  him  the  card  with  her  right  hand.] 

Noel  [instead  of  at  once  looking  at  the  card  takes  her 
left  hand  and  kisses  it].    Dear  Leila  ! 

Leila  [smiling].    That  is  my  hand.     This  is  the  card. 

Noel  [smiling  at  her].  Let's  see  who  he  is.  [Before  he 
looks  at  the  card  he  says]  You've  got  your  hair  done  in 
a  new  way. 

Leila.    D'you  like  it  ? 

Noel.    Yes.     I  like  that  saucy  little  twist  just  there. 

Leila  [laughs  and  thrusts  the  card  at  him].     There  ! 

Noel  [taking  the  card  from  her].     What's  his  name  ? 

Leila.     Mr.  Welkin.     I  think  he's  an  American  by  his 

Noel  [reading  the  card].  Ehsha  P.  Welkin.  Yes,  he 
must  be. 

This   is   the   first-act    atmosphere,    made   by    the 

219 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

delightful  young  married  woman  who  is  willing, 
a  little  imperiously,  to  be  gay  and  charming,  by 
the  husband  who  cares  a  great  deal,  and,  because 
of  their  presence,  by  the  pair  of  old  people  for 
whom  the  young  married  woman  is  a  little  more 
willing  to  be  her  gay  and  charming  self  than  she 
is  for  the  husband  to  whom  she  has  grown  used. 
The  words  of  these   people,   and   just   the   plain 
directions  of  the  dramatist  as  to  how  they  are 
spoken,    contribute   quite   unerringly  to   the   im- 
pression we  are  to  receive  from  this  scene.     And 
then  in  the  second  act,  when  Noel  returns  from 
America  unexpectedly,  and  finds  Captain  Harding 
m  the  house,  the  scene  of  tension  is  admirably 
done.     "  The  situation  is  too  much  for  Josephine. 
Finding  everybody's   attention  upon   her  she  is 
overcome  with  confusion  and  emotion  and  hurries 
out.     They  all  see  this.     Every  one    is    a    little 
more  embarrassed."    How  theatrical  this  might 
be  ;    do  we  not  know  to  tedium  these  scenes  of 
collective     embarrassment  —  until     the     Actor- 
Manager  came  to  the   rescue,  with    his  masterly 
charm?     How    quite    untheatrical    it    is;     how 
simply  effective,  how  moving  even— because  it  is 
so  truthfully  imagined. 

This  distrust  of  the  theatrical— of  that  which, 
hallowed  by  usage  in  the  theatre,  is  employed 
by  practising  dramatists  without  imaginative  con- 
sideration of  its  suitability  or  truth— is  implicit 
in  the  best  work  of  this  dramatist.  Because  this 
220 


HUBERT  HENRY  DAVIES 

distrust  is  so  little  vocal,  it  must  not  on  that 
account  be  missed.  Because  Mr.  Davies'  work  is, 
in  the  best  sense,  "  conventional,"  it  will  not  do 
to  fail  to  distinguish  him  from  the  crowd.  This 
story  of  the  affectionate  husband  who  finds  his 
wife  growing  careless,  it  is  not  a  "  new  "  story ; 
and  what  is  the  theatre's  advice  to  him  ? — why, 
that  he  should  pretend  to  be  careless  too.  Is  that 
not  the  immemorial  way,  of  proven  efficacy — in 
the  theatre  ?  We  may  find  a  comedy  of  Mr. 
Somerset  Maugham  going  exactly  upon  the  lines 
laid  down  in  a  comedy  of  Sir  John  Vanbrugh. 
We  have  found  Sir  James  Barrie  re-proving  the 
efficacy  of  the  theatre's  time-worn  advice  that  if 
your  husband  thinks  he  is  in  love  you  cannot  do 
better  than  give  him  a  good  stiff  dose  of  his 
beloved.  We  may  turn  back  from  "The  Ogre  "  of 
Mr.  Henry  Arthur  Jones  to  read  in  "  The  Beaux' 
Stratagem  "  of  Farquhar,  "  No,  no,  child,  'tis  a 
standing  maxim  in  conjugal  discipline,  that  when 
a  man  would  enslave  his  wife,  he  hurries  her  into 
the  country."  The  theatre  is  full  of  these  standing 
maxims  in  conjugal  discipline  and  conjugal 
strategy,  and  the  theatre-men  take  them  up  as 
they  find  them.  How  many  comedies  since  the 
Restoration  have  not  come  to  the  same  end  as 
that  to  which  Sir  Harry  Wildair  brings  his 
own, 

So  spite  of  satire  gainst  a  mairied  life 
A  man  is  truly  blessed  with^such  a  wife  ? 

221 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

But  Mr.  Davies,  while  still  in  their  territory,  does 
not  take  them  up  as  he  finds  them,  because  he 
has  something  he  prefers  of  his  own.     There  is 
some    one,    sure    enough,    to   give   the    theatre's 
advice  to  Noel  in  his  predicament,  but  it  is  not 
the  Actor-Manager,  all- wise  and  all-managing,  it  is 
the  thick-headed  old  gentleman  who  thinks  him- 
self such  a  fine  man  of  the  world.     And  what  is 
Noel's  reply  to  the  theatre's  advice  :    "  Yes,"  he 
says,   "  but  deliberately  to  set  to  work  to  make 
her  jealous,  it  may  be  the  clever  thing  to  do — 
but  it  isn't  sincere — it's  not  real — I  don't  like  it." 
That   is   the   dramatist's   reply   to   the   standing 
maxims    of    the    theatre :     they're    not    sincere, 
they're  not  real,  he  doesn't  like  them.     We  may 
find  this  distrust  of  the  unreal  in  each  of  the 
best  comedies  of  Mr.  Davies :    it  is  the  secret  of 
their    freshness.     Says    Noel,    "  You    can't    turn 
round  suddenly  after  breakfast  one  morning  and 
become  a  new  man — d  propos  of  nothing  at  all  "  ; 
but  that  is  what  the  people  of  the  theatre  find  no 
difficulty  in  doing.     Says  Leila,  "  He  hasn't  said 
one  word  of  anything  real  since  the  day  he  came 
home.     It's  simply  awful — the  constraint  between 
us."    The  constraint  that  we  saw  to  exist  between 
Mrs.   Ebbsmith  and  Lucas  would  be  something 
to  this  dramatist  quite  intolerable.     And  how  is 
this  passage,   for  its  negation  to  half  a  hundred 
of  the  most  cherished  of  the  theatre's  standing 
maxims  ? 
222 


HUBERT  HENRY  DAVIES 

Maurice.    Shall  you  tell  him  ? 

Leila.  I  shouldn't  mind.  I'd  rather — in  a  way.  It's 
more  honest.  But,  of  course,  one  can't.  Apart  from 
everything  else  it  would  hurt  him  so.  That's  really  what 
I  couldn't  bear  !  He  has  always  been  so  good  to  me,  and 
I'm  so  fond  of  him.  [Half  smiles  as  she  adds]  He's  a 
very  great  friend  of  mine. 

Maurice.    It's  extraordinary  how  I  don't  hate  him  ! 

Leiu^.  Why  should  you  hate  him  ?  I  don't  see  how 
anybody  could  hate  Noel !  You'd  love  him  if  you  knew 
him  well.  He's  got  so  much  character  and  he's  such  good 
company.  I'm  devoted  to  Noel — devoted  I  It's  so  silly 
of  p>eople  to  suppose  that  a  woman  only  faUs  in  love  with 
another  man  because  her  husband  is  either  a  brute  or  a 
fool! 

"  It's  extraordinary  how  I  don't  hate  him  " — 
that  is  the  theatre's  voice,  and  quite  properly  ; 
Maurice  has  the  theatre's  obtuseness.  "  I  hate 
him  !  I  hate  him  !  I  hate  him  !  "  Hke  that, 
three  times,  is  what  he  feels  is  expected  of  him  to 
say ;  but  in  the  hands  of  this  dramatist  he  cannot. 
In  the  hands  of  this  dramatist  the  people  we  know 
well  in  the  theatre,  not  greatly  different  to  look 
upon,  find  themselves  unaccountably  speaking  and 
acting  the  truth.  When  Captain  Harding  is  asked 
by  Leila's  husband  for  an  assurance  as  to  his 
income,  he  says  he  will  get  his  lawyers  to  draw 
up  a  "  thing  "  in  the  morning — how  unerringly 
would  Sir  Arthur  Pinero  have  given  us  the  right 
word  ! — the  word  that  would  be  proportionately 
wrong.  Nor  are  they  afraid  to  speak  out  their 
intimacy,   as  the  people  of  Mr.   Galsworthy  are. 

223 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

This  is  the  passage  immediately  following  the 
husband's  pathetically  comical  attempt  to  follow 
for  a  little  minute  the  advice  of  the  theatre  : 


Noel  [he  cannot  resist  her — he  goes  towards  her,  pauses, 
and  looks  down  at  her].  It's  been  my  fault  too — mine  more 
than  yours.  [Drops  on  one  knee  beside  her  and  says  im,' 
ploringly]  But  oh,  Leila — tell  me — ^let  me  think  !  let  me 
feel — ^let  me  know — that  it's  all  right. 

Leila  [drying  her  eyes  as  she  looks  at  him  and  says].  Yes, 
Noel — of  course — of  course  it's  all  right  1 

Noel.    D'you  swear  it  ? — ^that  there's  been  nothing 

Leila  [becoming  restive  and  offended].    I've  told  you. 

If  you're  not  going  to  take  my  word [Makes  a  movement 

away  from  him.] 

Noel  [taking  her  hand  and  drawing  her  round  to  face  him 
again].  No,  Leila — ^Leila  I  Don't  run  away.  I  take 
your  word.  You  say  it's  all  right.  I  believe  you.  But 
I  love  you  so  desperately.  I'm  so  jealous.  If  I  thought 
that  any  one  was  pushing  me  out  and  taking  my  place — 
I'd  .  .  .  I'd  .  .  .  [Dropping  his  voice  almost  to  a  whisper.] 
No,  no  !  Listen  to  me.  I  shouldn't  be  afraid — only — 
lately — I've  seen — for  some  time  past  I've  noticed — it's 
not  the  same — not  quite  the  same.  There  are  little  signs — 
little  things  that  make  me  think — and  then — ^you  say 
something  or  you  do  something — something  so  sweet  and 
tender — and  then  I  think  you  are  the  same — and  that  it's 
only  my  fears  and  my  jealousy  and  my  love  for  you.  You 
say  it's  all  right.    You  say  so ;   I  hope  it's  all  right. 

Leila.  Poor  old  Noel.  Dear  old  boy,  I  wish  I  was 
more  what  you  want. 

[He  is  kneeling  on  the  ground  beside  her. 

Noel.  I  wouldn't  have  you  any  different — but  I  wish 
we  were  back  at  St.  Ives.  Have  you  forgotten  how  it 
was  then  ?  You  are  everything  in  the  world  to  me  still — 
just  as  you  were  then — ^just  as  I  was  to  you  then.  Your 
224 


HUBERT  HENRY  DA  VIES 

mind  was  given  up  to  me — your  hands  were  always  finding  my 
hands.  When  we  looked  into  each  other's  eyes  and  kissed 
each  other — I  was  enough — I  was  everything.  What  a 
long  time  ago  that  seems.  Nothing  can  hurt  me  now, 
you  said,  neither  poverty,  nor  age,  nor  pain — so  long  as  I 
have  you. 

[She  dries  her  eyes. 
I  have  never  forgotten  that. 
Leila.    I'm  fond  of  you  still,  Noel. 

There  is  nothing  sentimental  in  that,  because  it  is 
impassioned ;  because  it  is  the  intimate  speech  of 
sincere  feeling,  it  has  the  rhythm  which  all  good 
speech  in  the  theatre  may  have  ;  it  is  delightful  to 
listen  to,  and,  within  and  beyond  the  words  we 
hear,  is  there  not  an  emotion  of  aching  pain  that 
sets  the  scene,  in  its  own  small  way,  within 
measurable  distance  of  Othello's  cry,   "  That  we 

can  call  these  delicate  creatures  ours "  ? 

It  is,  then,  this  adherence  to  a  basis  in  genuine 
feeling,  together  with  their  humour  and  excellent 
neatness  of  form,  that  gives  to  the  comedies  of 
Mr.  Da  vies  their  distinct  place  in  the  theatre. 
Kate  and  Desmond,  taking  tea  together  in  the  un- 
tenanted house,  came  to  the  agreement  that  a  love 
for  little  things  was  estimable,  and  that  those  are 
happy  who  retain  it.  "  That's  what  gives  dis- 
tinction to  their  humour  and  imagination ;  a 
charm  to  the  point  of  view."  Since  Cousin  Kate 
the  work  of  Mr.  Davies  has  gained  immensely  in 
distinction,  but  throughout  his  work,  even  in  the 
one  or  two  plays  that  are  frankly  poorer,  one  does 

P  225 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

not  lose  the  charm  of  the  point  of  view.  "  I  never 
think  what  I  think  of  people  I  like,"  says  the 
young  girl  in  the  earliest  play,  and  again,  "  What's 
evidence  when  you  know  a  man  ?  "  This  decision 
to  know  is  quite  Mr.  Davies'.  And  then  again, 
from  Josephine,  "  It's  no  use  knowing — with  one's 
brain.  ..."  Mr.  Davies' comedy  is  not  the  comedy 
of  brains  ;  it  is  the  comedy  of  exquisite  sym- 
pathies. "  If  she  feels  your  heart  is  towards  her," 
says  Captain  Drew,  "  I  don't  think  the  words  and 
the  ways  will  matter  much."  Somehow  we  know 
that  the  heart  of  this  dramatist  is  towards  his 
people,  and  that  is  why  he  is  successful  in  making 
us  understand  that  the  heart  of  Noel  is  towards 
Leila — it  is  not  the  words  and  ways  that  matter  ; 
it  is  the  intimate  sympathy  of  imagination.  In 
Mr.  Davies'  comedy  there  is  no  contempt.  Con- 
tempt cannot  be  indulged  in  without  a  certain 
lack  of  sympathy  ;  and  it  is  difficult  to  think  that 
a  lack  of  sympathy  is  anything  but  a  lack  of  patient 
understanding. 

Mr.  Davies'  comedy  does  not  fail  in  patient 
understanding.  "  I  don't  pretend  to  be  a  critic," 
says  Mrs.  Spencer,  confronted  by  the  phenomenon 
of  Kate's  novels,  and  we  like  her  all  the  more  that 
she  does  not.  The  spectacle  of  this  little  old  lady 
effecting  an  introduction,  and  after  apologizing  that 
she  couldn't  remember  the  one  name,  having  to 
confess  that  now  she  has  forgotten  the  other,  is 
funny,  but  our  laughter  is  with  her,  not  at  her. 
226 


HUBERT  HENRY  DAVIES 

And  so  with  Mrs.  Baxter's  knowledge  of  the  Latin 
language  : 

Mrs.  Baxter  [complacently].  I  learnt  Latin.  I  re- 
member so  well  standing  up  in  class  and  reciting  "  Hie — 
haec — hoc  " — accusative  "  hinc — hone — hue." 

Baxter  [correcting  her].    Hoc. 

Mrs.  Baxter.  Hue,  my  dear,  in  my  book.  And  the 
ablative  was  hibus. 

Baxter.    Hibus  ! 

[Mr.  Baxter  and  Miss  Roberts  both  laugh. 

Mrs.  Baxter  [making  wild  serious  guesses].  Hobibus — 
no,  wait  a  minute — that's  wrong — don't  tell  me.  [Closes 
her  eyes  and  murmurs]  Ablative — ho — hi — hu — no  ;  it's 
gone.  [Opens  her  eyes  and  says  cheerfully]  Never  mind. 
What  were  we  talking  about  ? 

Hankin's  scene  of  Lady  Denison  at  her  German 
lesson  is  not  funnier,  but  is  not  this  quite  free  from 
the  Hankin  "  fatuity  "  ?  The  mollusc  fatuous  ! 
— she  is  a  quite  gloriously,  almost  uproariously, 
successful  little  lady,  whom  we  cannot  hold 
contempt  for  if  we  would.  Wilde  might  have 
drawn  Mrs.  Gorringe,  with  her  "  Now  you're 
making  fun  again,"  or  Mrs.  Jardine,  who  was  never 
mistaken  in  eyes  ;  Hankin  would  have  liked  the 
humour  of  Mrs.  Moxon  and  the  reading  circle 
"  taking  "  King  Lear ;  but  Mrs.  Spencer,  who 
preserved  the  sanctities  of  the  Sabbath  with 
great  care  until  she  had  her  family  about  her  at 
the  supper-table,  is  a  more  kindly  portrait  of  a 
lady  than  Wilde  or  Hankin  was  ever  guilty  of  ; 
and  Aunt  Josephine  neither  Wilde  nor  Hankin 

227 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

could  have  drawn  at  all.     Nobody  but  Mr.  Davies, 
perhaps,  would  have  made  so  memorable  Uncle 
Rufus  at  the  breakfast-table,  petulantly  pushing 
a  sausage  or  saying  "  I  detest  haddocks.     That's 
well  known."    Nor  are  Mr.  Davies'  young  women 
the  mere  "  very  pretty  girls  "  that  serve  Hankin's 
comic  purposes  for  the  most  part ;    Miss  Roberts, 
the    pretty    governess,    is    near    to    the    Hankin 
convention,  it  is  true  ;  but  Leila  Gale,  the  "  delight- 
ful  young   married   woman,"   is   something   very 
much  more  than  this.     Vicky  Jardine,  who  leads 
to  an  amusing  scene  of  suspended  animation  in 
Mrs.  Gorringe's  Necklace,  is  a  very  good  portrait 
of  the  "  flapper,"  with  more  of  her  own  eager  life 
than  was  allowed  by  Wilde  to  the  young  lady  who 
had  the  pure  taste  for  the  photographs  of  Switzer- 
land ;  while  the  young  people  in  A  Single  Man  are 
similarly  studied  for  their  own  sakes.     Mr.  Davies 
is  good  at  young  people — one  does  not  remember 
a  better  English  schoolboy  than  Bobby  Spencer, 
not  even  in  Barrie.     But  Mr.  Davies  knows  quite 
clearly  where  to  draw  the  line — there  is  no  child- 
exploitation    in    his    drama.     In    regarding    the 
exceptional  synmietry  of  The  Mollusc  one  cannot 
sufficiently  admire  the  art  with  which  the  two 
little  Misses  Baxter  are  confined  to  their  proper 
quarters,  the  schoolroom. 

This  dramatist  has  run  with  no  "  movements," 
and  if  he  belongs  to  a  school  it  is  the  teacup- and- 
saucer  school  and  he  is  a  master  in  it  without,  it 
228 


HUBERT  HENRY  DAVIES 

seems,  any  pupils.  There  is  a  beauty  in  the 
quaHty  of  quietly  humorous  acceptance,  a  quality 
we  think  of  as  feminine,  and  perhaps  rightly,  since 
in  the  novels  of  Jane  Austen  it  finds  its  most  full 
expression.  If  Jane  Austen  had  been  a  dramatist, 
her  comedies,  one  may  fancy,  would  have  been  very 
like  the  best  comedies  of  Mr.  Hubert  Henry  Davies. 


229 


IX 
JOHN  GALSWORTHY 

AN  observer  from  the  continent  of  Europe,* 
bringing  to  an  end  his  survey  of  the 
English  theatre  in  the  year  1896,  wrote 
that  he  would  "  have  wished  to  determine  the 
influence  exerted  by  the  contemporary  German 
drama  upon  the  dramatic  movement  in  England, 
but  I  can  find  no  trace  of  any  such  influence  at 
all."  Ten  years  later  he  could  not  have  said  so, 
for  this  was  the  year  of  The  Silver  Box.  If  The 
Silver  Box  showed  the  influence  of  Hauptmann's 
"  Der  Biberpelz,"  Strife,  three  years  later,  showed 
even  more  plainly  the  influence  of  Hauptmann's 
"  Die  Weber  "  ;  and  this  we  might  say,  even  if  we 
did  not  remember  that  Hauptmann's  play  about 
the  weavers  was  one  of  the  earliest  productions 
of  the  Court  Theatre  in  the  days  when  the  dramatic 
art  of  both  Mr.  Granville  Barker  and  Mr.  John 
Galsworthy  was  in  the  making. 

That  Mr.   Granville  Barker  learned  something 
of  the  possibilities  of  the  theatre  from  the  "  social 

^  Augustln  Filon,  The  English  Stage. 

281 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

drama  "  of  Hauptmann,  and  that  Mr.  Galsworthy, 
when  he  brought  his  faculties  of  carefully  skilled 
observation  to  the  service  of  the  stage,   learned 
both  from  Hauptmann  and  from  Mr.  Barker,  are 
contentions  that  need  only  be  proved  in  so  far  as 
their  proof  will  help  us  to  a  more  exact  under- 
standing of  Mr.  Galsworthy's  own  art.     And  even 
so  the  question  of  influences  must  not  be  made 
too    much    of.     The    transition    from    Ibsen    to 
Hauptmann  was  an  inevitable  transition  in  the 
theatre.     It  may  be  quite  broadly  defined  as  the 
growing  consciousness  that  there  are  more  ways 
than  one  of  giving  to  the  drama  that  clear  unity 
without  which  it  cannot  be  good.     Ibsen  threw 
over  the  drama  of  Sardou  and  Dumas,  but  he  did 
not  throw  over  the  central  principle  upon  which 
they  built  their  plays.    Implicit  in  "  Rosmersholm  " 
as  in  "  La  Dame  aux  Camelias  "  or  in  "  Diplomacy  " 
is  the  belief  that  the  only  unity  which  can  hold  a 
play  together  is  the  unity  of  plot.     Strindberg  did 
not  achieve  another  unity  ;   he  worked  unconven- 
tionally within  Ibsen's,  proving  his  ability,  as  in 
*'Fr6ken  Julie, "  to  cut  a  plot  in  two  and  join  it  again 
without  the  usual  interval.     But  in  Hauptmann's 
first  play  we  are  conscious  of  a  unity  which  is 
independent  of  plot ;   a  farm-house  interior,  with 
the  living  souls  it  holds,   is  the  play's  sufficient 
unity,    altogether   apart   from   any   single   action 
there,  or  the  inheritance,  as  in  "  Rosmersholm,"  of 
any  single  action  in  the  past.     We  might  call  its 
232 


JOHN  GALSWORTHY 

unity  a  unity  of  being  as  distinguished  from  a 
unity  of  doing.  The  "  naturaHstic "  school  of 
dramatists,  of  whom  Hauptmann  is  merely  the 
most  consistently  distinguished,  put  the  creation 
of  atmosphere  in  the  place  of  the  complication  and 
unravelling  of  plot.  It  is  not  a  different  or  an 
exclusive  definition  of  the  dramatic,  it  is  merely 
a  wider  definition.  It  may  include  "  Othello  "  and 
"Mrs.  Tanqueray,"  in  which  the  personal  drama 
gives  the  plays  their  form  ;  but  it  may  include  also 
a  play  of  group  emotions  like  "  The  Weavers,"  in 
which  there  is  no  consistent  drama  of  single 
persons.  That  the  transition  from  the  tyranny  of 
plot  was  a  natural  and  inevitable  transition  would 
be  clear  if  the  German  Freie  BUhne  had  never 
come  into  being,  for  as  long  ago  as  Ostrovsky,  the 
theatre  in  Russia  had  proved  itself  to  be  as  good 
a  vessel  as  the  Russian  novel  to  hold  the  spirit  of 
sentient  passivity,  a  state  certainly  of  being  rather 
than  of  doing  ;  and  with  Tchekoff  the  drama  whose 
apparently  simple  but  really  very  complex  purpose 
is  the  creation  of  atmosphere  came  to  its  highest 
and  most  natural  development. 

The  drama  of  Mr.  Galsworthy  is  a  drama  which 
finds  its  sufficient  motive  in  the  fact  that  things 
are.  That  is  both  its  strength  and  its  weakness. 
The  "  social  drama,"  one  supposes,  is  written  when 
the  dramatist  is  less  interested  in  persons  than 
in  groups,  each  of  which  may  of  course  be,  and 
in  Hauptmann's  play  about  the  weavers  is,   in- 

233 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

dividualized  as  clearly  as  any  personal  protagonists 
could  be.     But  the  protagonists  are  not  persons— 
that  must  be  the  distinction.     The  protagonists 
of    "The    Weavers,"    for    example,    are    small 
capitalism  on  the  one  hand,  and,  on  the  other, 
labour    that    is    helpless    to    Hve    its    own    life 
because    it    has    not    the    means;     its     tragic 
pity    IS    that    life    should   get   itself   into   these 
difficulties.     The  play  is  truly  tragedy  because, 
while  life  suffers  like  an  animal  caught  in  the  toils, 
our  sense  of  the  beauty  of  life  is  made  more  clear. 
The  social  drama  may  find  its  complication  in 
collective    life    rather    than    in    the    life    of    the 
individual;     it  may   do   altogether  without  un- 
ravelling ;   but  it  may  not  abdicate  the  function  of 
the  drama— which  is  to   add  to  the  wonder  or 
beauty  of  human  life  an  intensity  of  clearness— or 
It  fails  to  be  truly  tragic,  as  the  plays  of  M.  Brieux 
fail.     Its  danger  is  that  it  may  content  itself  with 
the   exhibition   of   institutions   or   sink   into   the 
promulgation    of    theses.      The    drama    of    Mr 
Galsworthy   is   rather   studiously   free   from   this 
second  reproach,  but  it  is  not  always  free  from  the 
first. 

For  it  finds  the  theatre  in  existence,  and  in  the 
theatre— which  for  generations  no  man  had  thought 
he  might  enter  without  a  clever  plot  invented  or 
adopted— it  proceeds  to  show  us  the  peculiar 
interest  of  the  things  which  exist  outside.  To  a 
public  of  playgoers  famiharized  to  tedium  with 
234 


JOHN  GALSWORTHY 

the  exhibition  of  their  own  drawing-rooms — (or 
drawing-rooms  just  a  httle  more  splendid  than 
they  could  ever  hope  to  enjoy)— Mr.  Galsworthy 
communicated  his  discoveries  as  to  "  how  the 
poor  live  "  ;  and  with  this  difference,  that  whereas 
the  drawing-rooms  of  the  rich  had  not  in  them- 
selves been  held  to  be  sufficient  warrant  to  set  the 
machinery  of  the  theatre  in  motion,  Mr.  Gals- 
worthy's drama  needed  no  other  motive  to  come 
into  being  than  its  skilful  and  sympathetic 
observation  of  the  houses  of  the  poor.  These 
things  are  so,  it  said ;  you  cannot  therefore  but 
be  the  better  for  knowing  about  them.  There  was 
thus  in  it  from  the  first  a  something  irrelevant  to 
art,  a  something  of  self-sufficient  didacticism  that 
is  not  in  the  plays  of  Mr.  Barker,  and  that  is  not 
in  the  social  drama  of  Hauptmann.  In  "  The 
Voysey  Inheritance  "  the  plot  is  certainly  of  less 
importance  than  the  creation  of  a  particular 
atmosphere,  the  atmosphere  of  a  stable  domes- 
ticity built  upon  commercial  instability  ;  but  we 
are  perfectly  clear  that  Chislehurst  is  not  brought 
into  the  play  merely  because  Chislehurst  exists 
as  a  phenomenon  of  some  social  importance.  To 
Hauptmann  a  thieves'  comedy  is  a  study,  of 
perfect  sympathy  and  truth,  we  feel,  in  how  the 
poor  live ;  but  they  are  thieves,  and  it  is,  quite 
undoubtably,  a  comedy.  To  Mr.  Galsworthy  a 
thieves'  comedy  is  the  contrast  between  a  rich 
thief  and  a  poor  thief  in  the  eyes  of  the  law,  with 

235 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

extenuating   circumstances    in    both    cases,    dulv 
reported.  ^ 

It  is  Mr.   Galsworthy's  purpose  to  go  behind 
the  morning  papers,  and  to  show  us  the  rich  store 
of      human  interest"  there.    His  claim  upon  us 
IS  that   If  we  follow  him,  we  shall  "understand." 
We  follow  him  accordingly,  into  the  police  court, 
mto  a  mass  meeting  of  labourers,  into  His  Majesty's 
prison  cells.     And  the  plays  of  Mr.  Galsworthy  are 
these  things.     The  art  of  Mr.  Galsworthy,  we  may 
say,  IS  the  art  of  skilful  exhibition.     It  is  when  he 
comes  to  put  form  upon  these  various  exhibitions 
that  his  difference  from  the  dramatists  we  have 
mentioned  is  apparent.       The  Silver   Box  would 
have  been  far  less  good  a  play  if  there  had  been  no 
silver  box  in  it,  just  as  the  thieves'  comedy  of 
Hauptmann  is  inseparable  from  the  beaver  coat 
But  a  kind  of  imaginative  timidity  made  it  impos- 
sible  for  Mr.  Galsworthy  to  put  the  silver  box  to  any 
use  so  strikingly  integral  as  that  to  which  Haupt- 
mann put  the  beaver  coat,  when,  for  example,  we 
hear  of  its  being  worn  by  the  bargeman  far  out  in 
the  centre  of  the  river.     The  silver  box  might 
equally  well  have  been  a  gold  tooth-pick,  or  a  gold 
watch,  or  even,  since  the  disproportionate  severity 
of  the  punishment  visited  upon  the  poor  is   Mr 
Ga  sworthy's  theme,  a  watch  of  oxidized  iron.     Mr* 
Galsworthy's  finished  mastery  of  stage  revelation 
m   his   first   play-(the   excellently   apprehensive 
opening  of  his  first  scene  will  serve  for  an  example) 


JOHN  GALSWORTHY 

— must  not  blind  us  to  the  fact  that  it  is  not  really 
a  play  about  a  silver  box.  The  silver  box  remains, 
after  the  play  is  done,  a  convenient  pretext  for 
having  shown  us  some  things  which  Mr.  Galsworthy 
wished  to  show  us,  and  it  has  not,  even  so,  been 
made  into  a  kind  of  inevitable  symbol  of  these 
things  as  it  would  have  been  by  a  dramatist  of 
stronger  imagination.  Now  what  Mr.  Galsworthy 
wished  to  show  us  we  know — a  Liberal  member  of 
Parliament,  a  room  in  a  tenement  house,  a  London 
police  court,  a  ne'er-do-well  of  the  upper  and  a 
ne'er-do-well  of  the  lower  classes — accurately 
observed  every  one  of  them ;  but  why  did  he 
wish  to  show  us  these  things  ?  The  Silver  Box 
is  a  good  play,  and  not  merely  a  series  of  accurate 
observations,  because  Mr.  Galsworthy  did  very 
strongly  wish  to  show  us  a  social  contrast.  I 
suppose  it  may  be  said  that  whatever  else  the 
drama  may  exist  without  it  cannot  exist  without 
contrast ;  nor  any  other  of  the  arts,  for  that 
matter,  since  the  very  excitement  of  Whistler's 
Symphony  in  White  is  to  observe  the  narrow 
limitations  within  which  contrast  has  been  success- 
fully achieved.  Mr.  Galsworthy  found  the  motivity 
to  his  first  play  in  his  pleased  surprise — (an  artistic 
pleasure  mingled  with  a  little  humane  pain) — at 
the  dilTerent  fates  attending  the  ne'er-do-well  of  the 
upper  and  the  ne'er-do-well  of  the  lower  classes, 
who  are  guilty  of  what  is,  in  kind,  exactly  the 
same  series  of  social  offences.     But  this  surprise 

237 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

at  the  existence  of  social  distinctions  is  not  a  very 
strong  or  lasting  motivity  to  drama ;  it  is  a 
species  of  contrast  definitely  less  stimulating  than 
the  eternal  wonder  at  human  differences. 

Accordingly,  contrast,  which  to  Mr.  Galsworthy's 
first  play  had  been  the  motive,  became  in  his  later 
plays  the  method.  Mr.  Galsworthy's  drama  is 
the  drama  of  social  contrasts  for  their  own  sakes. 
Thus  his  strike  drama  is  not  about  one  Anthony 
and  one  Roberts ;  it  is  about  the  differing 
Uves  and  fates  of  Anthony  and  his  kind  and  of 
Roberts  and  his  kind  in  a  capitalist  civilization 
when  brought  to  the  touchstone  of  industrial 
deadlock.  The  tragedy  of  Falder  is  not  about 
Falder,  but  about  the  way  in  which  we  firmly 
entrenched  ones  put  away  the  weak  in  the  name 
of  the  Law,  and  forget  that  they  are  men.  The 
play  of  country-house  life  is  not  a  play  about  the 
love  of  the  eldest  son  for  the  daughter  of  his 
father's  gamekeeper ;  it  is  a  play  about  the 
varying  deference  given  to  morality  according  to 
the  degree  in  which  two  specifically  contrasted 
cases  involve  the  house's  honour.  Mr.  Galsworthy 
has  ranged  far,  but  he  remains  the  Mr.  Galsworthy 
who  wrote  The  Silver  Box.  That,  as  we  have  seen, 
was  a  comedy  of  discriminating  treatment,  and 
the  personal  colour  by  which  it  was  his  own  was 
his  feeling  that  the  law's  discrimination  in  favour 
of  the  rich  thief  was  somehow  rather  wrong.  By 
that,  and  by  a  not-very-far-to-be-sought  didac- 
238 


JOHN  GALSWORTHY 

ticism;  so  that  in  the  table  of  the  play  which 
set  out  the  household  of  John  Barthwick,  "  a 
wealthy  Liberal,"  we  read  of  Jones,  "  the  stranger 
within  their  gates,"  and  were  made  to  share  Mr. 
Galsworthy's  feeling  that  it  was  somehow  rather 
wrong  that  the  Joneses  of  this  world  should  remain 
strangers  within  the  gates  of  the  Barthwicks.  The 
Barthwicks  were  just  a  little  culpable  in  that  they 
did  not  even  try  to  understand. 

But  at  this  point  we  have  to  balance  Mr. 
Galsworthy's  feeling  that  the  social  contrast  is 
somehow  rather  wrong  with  Mr.  Galsworthy's 
careful  impartiaUty.  First  of  all,  he  is  an  accurate 
observer ;  but  next  he  is  an  observer  who  would 
like  us  to  understand  quite  clearly  that  the 
accuracy  of  his  observations  has  not  been  affected 
by  any  conclusions  to  which  they  may  have  led 
him,  howsoever  regrettable.  Mr.  Galsworthy  is 
a  dramatist  who  is  anxious  about  many  matters, 
but  chiefly  he  is  anxious  to  be  fair.  In  his  first 
play,  lest  we  should  too  hastily  assume  that  the 
right  was  all  on  the  side  of  the  Joneses,  he  made 
Jones  beat  his  wife  ;  and  then,  lest  we  should  run 
away  with  the  idea  that,  among  the  poor,  a  sex- 
contrast  was  being  drawn  all  in  favour  of  the 
women,  he  balanced  a  wife-beating  Jones  with  a 
wife-beaten  Livens.  The  young  solicitor  who 
makes  out  the  cheque  in  a  hurry  and  leaves  a 
space  after  the  nine  is  not  angry  or  vindictive 
with  the  clerk  who  takes  a  pen  and  ticks  in  "  ty  "  ; 

239 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

he  does  his  best  to  save  him  from  prosecution. 
All  the  persons  of  Mr.  Galsworthy's  drama  have  a 
share  in  this  extreme  anxiety  of  their  author  to 
be  fair.  It  is  as  though,  having  found  the  field 
of  his  drama  in  social  distinctions,  he  had  said 
to  his  people :  "  Now  the  dramatic  contrast 
between  you  is  in  a  sense  ready-made.  I  should 
like  you  to  be  careful  not  to  presume  upon  it." 
His  judge,  in  summing  up,  is,  within  the  limita- 
tions of  his  position,  a  model  of  fairness  ;  the 
prison-governor  who  administers  in  a  similar 
spirit  the  system  as  he  finds  it  "  can't  help  liking  " 
the  poor  fellows  in  his  care  ;  even  the  constable 
who  has  to  hale  off  to  the  police-court  the  pathetic 
little  suicide,  '  ecause  it  is  the  system,  is  a  "  good 
sort."  It  is  part  of  Mr.  Galsworthy's  careful  plan 
as  a  dramatist  to  personalize  his  institutions  at 
their  best.  In  the  difficulty  in  which  the  eldest 
son  of  the  Cheshires  finds  himself  entangled.  Lady 
Cheshire  is  far  from  seeing  one  side  only  ;  while 
Sir  William,  if  he  depart  at  all  from  strict  fairness, 
is  careful  to  explain  :  "I  am  speaking  under  the 
stress  of  very  great  pain — some  consideration  is 
due  to  me,"  and  we  give  it.  We  always  give  to 
Mr.  Galsworthy's  people,  administering  a  little 
apologetically  the  social  system  they  find  them- 
selves involved  in,  the  consideration  that  is  due 
to  them.  That  is  a  tribute  to  their  successful- 
ness.  But  as  we  give  it  we  begin  to  understand 
what  is  meant  by  being  "  studiously  fair."  There 
240 


JOHN  GALSWORTHY 

is  nothing  in  Mr.  Galsworthy's  carefully  preserved 
impartiality  capable  of  adding  to  his  drama  so  poig- 
nant a  truthfulness  as  that  of  Hauptmann's  old 
Hilse  the  weaver,  who  has  good  words  for  the  manu- 
facturers upon  his  lips  until  he  is  shot  dead  in  his 
chair  by  a  stray  bullet  that  comes  in  at  the  window. 
We  almost  find  ourselves  guilty  of  wishing  that 
Mr.  Galsworthy  would  permit  his  people  to  be 
unfair  for  a  change.  The  defect  of  Mr.  Galsworthy's 
virtue  of  impartiaUty  is  that  it  has  become  self- 
conscious. 

And  now  let  us  see  how  this  drama  of  social 
distinctions  works  out  in  tragedy  and  in  comedy. 
Both  alike  are  marked  by  a  kind  of  yearning 
intimacy.  The  sincere  desire  at  "*the  heart  of 
Mr.  Galsworthy's  drama  we  are  acquainted  with  : 
it  is  that  we  should  understand.  It  does  not 
much  matter  whom  or  what  we  understand, 
and  so  we  are  given  William  Falder,  very 
small,  in  contrast  with  the  majesty  of  the  Law, 
very  large.  The  tragedy  is  dependent  upon  the 
fact  that  things  are  so.  It  therefore  works  out 
rather  easily.  The  dramatist's  task  is  to  show 
us  Falder  in  a  solicitor's  office,  Falder  in  the  dock 
at  the  Central  Criminal  Court,  Falder  in  the  cells 
of  His  Majesty's  prison,  and  the  dramatist  is 
perfectly  capable  of  these  scenes.  Our  tragic 
emotion  in  face  of  Mr.  Galsworthy's  drama  would 
be  expressed  in  some  such  words  as :  "  Yes,  I 
suppose  that's  quite  true.     What  are  they  going 

Q  241 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

to  do  about  it  ?  "  We  may  go  so  far  as  to  wonder 
quite  actively  what  ought  to  be  done.  It  is  just 
the  same  with  Mr.  Galsworthy's  comedy.  Mr. 
Galsworthy  has  written  a  comedy  of  self-criticism, 
as  Ibsen  did  in  "The  Wild  Duck,"  and,  perhaps 
with  a  memory  of  Ibsen,  conscious  or  unconscious, 
he  has  called  it  The  Pigeon.  This  is  particularly 
revealing.  People  had  been  saying,  perhaps,  that 
Mr.  Galsworthy's  drama  always  asked  them  the 
question  what  they  were  going  to  do  about  it ; 
so  he  wrote  a  play,  much  lighter  in  texture,  to 
make  it  plain  that  it  was  not  what  they  did  that 
mattered,  but  how  much  they  understood.  The 
people  who  are  most  ready  with  an  answer,  indeed, 
to  what  is  to  be  done  about  the  problem  of  poverty 
— the  Canon,  the  Professor,  the  Justice  of  the 
Peace — are  ridiculed,  just  as  Halmar  Ekdal  was 
figured  by  Ibsen  to  indicate  what  he  did  not  mean. 
What  Mr.  Galsworthy  means  is  Understanding — 
"  without  that.  Monsieur,  all  is  dry  as  a  parched 
skin  of  orange."  His  French  ne'er-do-well  figures 
the  hopelessness  of  mere  doing,  and  the  little 
flower-seller,  and  Timson,  once  a  cabman,  figure 
it  again.  Wellwyn,  the  artist,  is  what,  we  fancy, 
Mr.  Galsworthy  wishes  us  to  be  :  "  It  isn't  senti- 
ment. It's  simply  that  they  seem  to  me  so — so — 
jolly.  If  I'm  to  give  up  feeling  sort  of — nice  in 
here  {he  touches  his  chest)  about  people — it  doesn't 
matter  who  they  are — then  I  don't  know  what  I'm 
to  do."  It  isn't  sentiment,  and,  in  case  we  should 
242 


JOHN  GALSWORTHY 

think  so,  the  yearning  intimacy  is  relieved 
dehberately  with  humours.  The  method  is  still 
the  method  of  contrast,  carefully  pointed.  The 
professor  and  the  J.  P.  accuse  each  other  of  losing 
sight  of  the  individual,  and  together  they  step 
out  arguing  into  the  night  and  fall  over  the  sleep- 
ing figure  of  the  drunken  cabman.  "Monsieur, 
it  was  true,  it  seems,"  we  are  prompted.  "  They 
had  lost  sight  of  the  individual."  If  we  think 
the  dramatist  to  have  travelled  rather  far  from 
the  less  unsubtle  refrain  of  the  play  about  the 
silver  box,  "  a  poor  man  who  behaved  as  you've 
done  .  .  ."  we  soon  find  that  Mr.  Galsworthy 
on  his  defence  is  not  really  a  different  Mr.  Gals- 
worthy : 

Ferrand.  Ah  1  Monsieur,  I  am  loafer,  waster — what 
you  Uke — for  all  that  [bitterly]  poverty  is  my  only  crime. 
If  I  were  rich,  should  I  not  be  simply  veree  original,  'ighly 
respected,  with  soul  above  commerce,  travelling  to  see  the 
world  ?  And  that  young  girl,  would  she  not  be  "  that 
charming  ladee,"  "  veree  chic,  you  know  1 "  And  the  old 
Tims — good  old-fashioned  gentleman — drinking  his  liquor 
well.  Eh !  bien — ^what  are  we  now  ?  Dark  beasts, 
despised  by  all.    That  is  life,  Monsieur. 

That  is,  at  any  rate,  the  motive  to  the  drama  of 
Mr.  Galsworthy — the  drama  of  social  distinctions. 
And  this,  when  the  flower-girl  has  tried  to  drown 
herself,  is  that  drama's  comedic  complication,  so 
far  as  it  can  be  said  to  have  one  : 


Wellwyn.    Well  I     God  in  Heaven  1    Of  all  the 

topsy-turvy !     Not   a   soul   in   the   world   wants   her 

243 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

alive — and  now  she's  to  be  prosecuted  for  trying  to  be 
where  every  one  wishes  her. 

It  is  a  damned  topsy-turvy  world,  not  merely  a 
damned  subtle  world,  as  Mr.  Barker's  Major 
Thomas  would  have  it ;  and  to  place  topsy  against 
turvy  is  Mr.  Galsworthy's  way  to  make  a  social 
drama. 

Mr.  Galsworthy  placed  topsy  against  turvy  to 
best  effect  when  he  wrote  a  play  of  social  distinc- 
tions in  excitement.  Strife,  by  its  subject-matter, 
is  given  the  dramatic  value  of  crisis  in  greater 
degree  than  any  other  of  his  plays.  It  was  like 
Mr.  Galsworthy  to  choose  a  case  in  which  the 
men's  trade  union  stood  aside,  so  that  he  might 
have  an  impartial  arbiter  ready-made  ;  and  it  is  in 
Harness's  concluding  words,  "  That's  where  the 
fun  comes  in,"  that  we  find  the  dramatist's 
characteristic  pitying  aloofness  rather  than  in 
anything  so  simple  as  old  man  Thomas's  "  Shame 
on  your  strife !  "  There  is  the  same  careful 
pointing  of  contrasts  :  the  Directors'  fire  (Act  I) 
against  the  men's  fire  (Act  II),  the  Directors' 
meals  against  the  men's  meals,  the  Director's 
wife,  who  may  miss  her  train  to  Spain,  against 
the  man's  wife,  who  is  dead.  We  "  hear  both 
sides " ;  sometimes  the  play  takes  on  almost 
the  symmetry  of  an  argument :  it  still  remains 
commendably  unheated.  Strife  is  a  better  play 
than  Justice.  The  victim  there  Mr.  Galsworthy 
did  his  best  to  personalize  by  showing  him 
244 


JOHN  GALSWORTHY 

to  us  through  the  eyes  of  his  lover,  in  her 
words  over  his  dead  body  at  the  end ;  but  he 
remained  essentially  an  impersonal  victim  of  a 
system.  The  system  in  that  case  it  was  not 
possible  to  personalize  at  all.  Here  the  struggle 
is  personalized  very  cleverly  by  making  each  of 
its  protagonists  something  more  than  a  "  party  " 
man.  Anthony  is  an  extremist,  as  Roberts  is  an 
extremist ;  both  draw  something  out  of  the 
common  stock  of  life,  and  are  the  more  men  for 
that  reason.  It  pleased  Mr.  Galsworthy  to  make 
them,  rich  man  and  poor  man,  draw  the  same 
thing ;  and  life  treats  them  alike.  The  scene  in 
which  they  face  one  another,  both  thrown  over 
by  their  kind,  is  the  most  strongly  imagined  in 
Mr.  Galsworthy's  drama  ;  and  at  the  same  time, 
in  its  reliance  for  its  full  effect  upon  our  know- 
ledge of  the  differing  defeat  attending  the  poor 
man  and  the  rich,  typically  Mr.  Galsworthy's  : 

Habness.  For  shame,  Roberts  !  Go  home  quietly,  man  ; 
go  home. 

Roberts  [tearing  his  arm  away].  Home  ?  [Shrinking 
together  in  a  whisper.]    Home  ! 

Perhaps  it  is  not  difficult  to  see  how  Mr.  Gals- 
worthy incurred  the  charge  of  sentimentality  which 
his  nice  little  artist-man  is  at  pains  to  rebut. 
"  Monsieur,"  says  the  picturesque  Frenchman  who 
does  his  part  in  the  rebuttal,  "  if  HE  himself 
were  on  earth  now,  there  would  be  a  little  heap 
of  gentlemen  writing  to  the  journals  every  day 

245 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

to   call   Him   sloppee   sentimentalist!"    It   may 
be  so ;    but  still  there  must  be  something  which 
dictates,  for  example,  this  dramatist's  choice  of 
Christmas    Eve    as    the    background    for    both 
comedy  and  tragedy,  to  show  us  Falder  beating 
the  door  of  his  prison-cell    and  these  birds   of 
the  Embankment  despoiling  their  pigeon,  when 
on  any  other  night  in  the  year  the  same  things 
are.     It  is  the  choice  of  the  ready-made  occasion. 
Christmas  !  "  says  the  governor,  and  we  are  to 
contrast  this  greenish-distempered  prison  interior 
with  the  domestic  fireside  of  our  imagination's 
choice.     We  will  not  call  this  sentimental,  we  will 
call  It  the  employment  of  ready-made  emotion  in 
the   service   of   dramatic   contrast.     If   we   have 
suffered  ourselves  to  be  moved  by  it  in  Mr.  Gals- 
worthy's theatre,  do  we  not  remember  that  after- 
wards we  have  been  just  a  little  bit  ashamed  ? 

In  the  same  way,  much  of  Mr.  Galsworthy's 
dramatic  effect  is  aimed,  if  one  is  permitted  to  say 
so,  just  a  little  below  the  belt.  It  was  to  be 
expected  that  Mr.  Galsworthy  would  choose  to 
re-write  "  Caste, "  in  illustration  of  the  progress  made 
by  the  English  drama.  But  another  dramatist 
would  not  have  used  the  old  play  as  he  uses  it, 
for  purposes  of  quite  so  immediate  a  contrast : 

Studdenham.     Wonderful    faithful    creatures;     foUow 
you  like  a  woman.    You  can't  shake  'em  off  anyhow 
[He  protrudes  the  right-hand  pocket.]    My  girl,  she'd  set 
her  heart  on  htm,  but  she'll  just  have  to  do  without 
246 


JOHN  GALSWORTHY 

Dot  [as  though  galvanized].    Oh !  no.  I  can't  take  it 
awav  from  her.  .    ,  ,    mi.  i.^- 

settled,  then.  [He  turns  to  the  door.]  [To  the  PuppyO 
Ah  !  Would  you  !  Tryin'  to  wriggle  out  of  it  I  Regular 
young  limb  !  ^^^  ^^  ^^^  followed  by  Jackson. 

Christine.    How  ghastly !        ,    ,    ^    ,    .     ^^  t™^ 
Dot  [suddenly  catching  sight  of  the  book  xn  her  hand]. 

"  Caste  1 "  T      I. 

[She  gives  vent  to  a  short  sharp  laugh. 

THE  CURTAIN  FALLS 

Freda  is  to  have  a  baby  by  the  eldest  son,  and  of 
course  there  was  a  baby  in  the  false  old  play ;   so 
Freda  is  brought  in  to  assist  at  the  young  ladies 
rehearsal,  and  when  they  appeal  to  her  for  help 
in  the  matter  of  the  baby  :    "  Borrow  a  real  one. 
Miss  Joan,"   she   says.     ''There   are   some   that 
don't  count  much."    The  conjuncture  of  the  real 
and  the  unreal  is  there ;    but  its  intention  is  too 
apparent   to    be    very    poignant.     We    are    not 
aUowed,  in  any  event,  to  feel  ^ith  Freda  very 
much.     We  are  willing  to;    all  Mr.  Galsworthy  s 
sympathetic    understanding    of    the    powers    of 
truthful  speech,  all  his  excellent  mistrust  of  the 
rhetorical,  are  in  the  scene  of  her  avowal.     Mr. 
Galsworthy's  timidity,  too,  in  the  face  of  emotion, 
is  there  ;   but  he  has  given  us  enough  in  the  little 
scene,  we  need  not  quarrel  about  the  fall  of  a 
curtain.     Our  quarrel  is,  if  we  wish  to  feel  with 
Freda,  that  she  is  allowed  to  be  no  more  than  a  Ime 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

Object  to  be  got  "into  trouble,"  that  is  all  • 
because  an  under-keeper  has  goi  a  viLe  rirl 
mto    he  same  trouble.     Now  that  the  Ser^[ 

auL  t  /""'-^'i"-  *^  ^"^^  °'  *e  househ,Jd  be 
quite  so  firm  m  his  adherence  to  the  dictate  of 

Toirr '  ""^'"y  ^-tl'-t  -  the  drama  Thi 
upper  class  has  one  law  for  itself,   it  appeals 

that  It  is  so  may  even  be  right  and  necessary 
the  dramatist  himself  is  perffctly  willing Th^rr 

partirindT^'- ,.^^^'^'^S  is  even  Ind  im! 
partia  and  to  pick  a  quarrel  out  of  it  would  be 
difficult ;  but  It  is  not  likely  that  we  shaU  do 
that,  because  we  do  not  very  much  mind, 
th.f  **■■;  Galsworthy's  plays  it  is  not  character 
that  really  matters.    The  contrast  he  needs  for 

SS'wm'r''-*"'^"''  ^"-^  '"  «-*"'»  *t 

types  will  really  serve  its  purpose  quite  well 
Character  is  added,  it  is  true ;  but  father  on 
Mr   Cokeson's  prmciple,  of  making  it  all  nice  and 

noMutp^t*";-  «'*'--*'>y'^  precision  that's 
not  quite  portraiture  amounts  to  little  more  than 
we  may  read  in  his  stage  directions :    "Enid  is 
tall ;  she  has  a  small,  decided  face,  and  is  twentv 
eight  years  old."    Thus  Mrs.  Jones  is  a  charwoman 
who  takes  life  as  it  comes,  "  of  course  "  •  wi     t 
speaks  of  her  own  work,'whe„  r  an'g:t1t   a^ 
her    "profession."    Wellwyn    is    an    arOst    wh^ 
always  smokes,  "  the  despTof  soil  rile;'" 


JOHN  GALSWORTHY 

who  gives  his  visiting  cards,  his  charity,  and  even 
his  trousers  to  poor  people  because  it  makes  him 
feel  "  nice  in  here."  Miss  Beech,  the  family 
dependent,  is  a  dear  old  lady  to  whom  men  and 
women  and  worms  are  alike  "  poor  creatures," 
each  one  thinking  himself  a  "  special  case." 
Cokeson  is  a  nice  old  man,  who  keeps  dogs  and  goes 
to  chapel  out  of  office  hours,  and  likes  his  dinner 
hot.  This  dramatist  is  always  curious,  always 
observant.  And  because  Mrs.  Jones's  lot  in  life 
is  a  sad  one,  we  are  given,  among  the  little  accurate 
things  she  says,  some  at  which  we  may  smile  ; 
"  almost  quite  drunk,"  she  describes  her  husband 
to  the  magistrate.  The  husband  of  Mrs.  Megan 
is  not  a  bad  one,  but  when  he  gets  playing  cards 
"  then  'e'll  fly  the  kite."  "  I  see,"  says  Wellwyn, 
"  and  when  he's  not  flying  it,  what  does  he  do  ?  " 
All  Mr.  Galsworthy's  characterization  is  curious 
and  sympathetic  and  indulgent,  like  that.  People 
are  "so  awfully  human,"  in  Wellwyn's  phrase; 
especially  poor  people. 

Mr.  Galsworthy's  stage  directions  seem  to  go  upon 
the  same  principle  of  making  things  nice  for  us, 
rather  than  suggesting  the  spontaneous  overflow  of 
character  eager  to  make  itself  explicit,  as  Mr.  Gran- 
ville Barker's  do.  But  when  we  have  disregarded 
what  is  added  to  make  them  nice  for  us,  Mr.  Gals- 
worthy's people  are,  perhaps,  over-simplified.  We 
do  not,  for  example,  even  the  poor  among  us,  move 
in  quite  so  regular  an  orbit  around  the  "  personal  " 

249 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

af  Mr'    ri7'Tr^'"  *^^^^  *^^  fi^^d    points, 
as     Mr.     Galsworthy    would     have     us    believe 

t^onT''      ."     Mr   ,  Galsworthy's     determina 

them    tak^  r '''^      ^''    P^^P^^    *^^*    ^^kes 
them    take    refuge    m    impersonality    so    often. 

Or  more  hkely,  it  is  because  they  are  conscious 

that  they  are  speaking  for  their  class,  and  that 

their  creator  has  enjoined  impartiality  upon  them. 

But  Mr.  Galsworthy's  people  always  come  baTk 

to  an  msistence  upon  the  personal,  as  though  to 

assure  us  by  word  of  mouth  that  their  identity 

has   not   been   merged   in   the   type;     even   the 

r/ mTp  r^i.^!'''  ^^"  ^^  ^  ^^^^^^ite  vessel 
for  Mr.  Galsworthy's  well-known  virtue  of  im- 
partiality.  Each  one  would  have  us  know,  with 
the  hero  of  Browning's  -Pauline,"  that  he  or  she 
has  a  most  clear  idea  of  consciousness  of  self  " 
Mr.  Galsworthy  gets  some  of  his  fun,  his  rather 

fat  on  h-  T;  '"'  1  *^"'  ''  "^^^  *h^  -rt-n 
ll  ?.  1.T  '  *^''^  reformers  in  The  Pigeon,  with 
their     My  theory "    "  My  theory—"    "  My 

ofthT^/  J^""^  th^^^rious  may  see  how  part 
of  the  effect  of  personal  interest  in  Strife  is  gained 
by  making  one  and  then  another-the  secretary  of 
the  company,  Mr.  Scantlebury,  the  women.  Frost, 
the  valet,  John  Anthony  himself-narrow  down 
the  social  conflict  until  only  his  own  little  part  in 
It  is  apparent.  paxt  m 

Mr.  Galsworthy,  with  an  air  of  discovery,  once 
wote   a  ''Play  on  the  Letter  'I.'"     4' ran 


JOHN  GALSWORTHY 

exception  to  much  that  we  have  said,  in  that  it 
does  not  rest  upon  a  contrast  that  is  ready-made  ; 
unless  we  hold  the  difEering  search  for  joy  of 
mother  and  of  daughter  to  be  so.  But  that  is  a 
contrast,  if  of  circumstance,  of  circumstance  that 
is  not  merely  social ;  and  that  is  the  reason  why 
Joyt  though  a  pale  little  play,  is  in  some  respects 
the  most  interesting  Mr.  Galsworthy  has  yet 
written.  Every  one,  we  learn  in  it,  thinks  them- 
selves a  "  special  case,"  with  this  conclusion  : 

Colonel.    I  say,  Peachey — Life's  very  funny. 
Miss  Beech.    Men  and  women  are  I 

That,  we  feel,  is  Mr.  Galsworthy's  discovery,  and 
the  motive  to  his  plays  :  life,  with  its  contrasts, 
is  very  funny  ;  men  and  women  are  "  so  awfully 
human  "  that  he  just  had  to  show  them  to  us. 

But  the  art  of  dramatic  exhibition  is  a  minor  art. 
It  is  the  skilful  employment  of  the  ready-made. 
Just  as  Falder's  prison-cell,  we  feel,  and  the 
procedure  of  the  Central  Criminal  Court  have  their 
existence  independent  of  any  creative  act  of  the 
dramatist,  so  it  is  with  Mrs.  Megan,  the  flower- 
seller,  and  Timson,  the  superseded  cabman.  "  I 
don't  want  the  old  fellow  to  feel  he's  being  made 
a  show  of,"  says  Mr.  Galsworthy's  artist  man  ; 
we  note  the  kindness  of  his  heart,  but  we  do  feel 
that,  just  a  little.  We  do  feel  that  for  Mr. 
Galsworthy's  people  to  be  "  made  a  show  of  "  is 
a  consequence  of  his  method.     It  is  the  rebellious- 

251 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

ness  of  the  material.  The  raw  material  of  the 
plays  is  the  mass  meeting  of  the  strikers,  the 
procedure  of  a  court  of  law ;  and,  after  the 
dramatist  has  put  it  to  his  purposes,  it  remains 
raw.  The  West  London  police  court  is  not  a 
difficult  thing  to  "  put  on  the  stage,"  but  it  is 
a  very  difficult  thing  to  put  through  the  dramatist's 
imagination.  That  is  why,  in  spite  of  all  Mr. 
Galsworthy's  earnest  artistry,  his  plays  in  general 
have  not  set  up  their  own  quite  satisfying  con- 
vention in  the  theatre,  as  those,  for  example,  of 
Mr.  Barker  and  of  Hauptmann  have.  A  mass 
meeting  of  strikers  is  an  awkward  thing  in  exhibi- 
tion;  "the  men  form  little  groups,"  we  read, 
and  their  conversation  comes  to  us  with  the 
arbitrary  selectiveness  of  Wilde's  conversations  in 
a  drawing-room,  as  with  the  turning  on  and  off 
of  little  taps.  Similarly  with  the  police  court  : 
the  people  speak  "  behind  their  hands  "  to  one 
another,  and  their  voices  come  to  us  quite  plainly, 
while  the  usher  calls  for  silence  in  ineffective 
effort  to  save  the  dramatist's  face.  Mr.  Gals- 
worthy has  gone  to  reality  for  his  drama,  but  he 
has  served  the  new  wine  in  the  old  bottles.  Drury 
Lane  has  shown  us  many  a  police  court  thus.  Mr. 
Galsworthy's  sense  of  the  stage  is  shown  more 
surely  in  the  little  things  :  the  ill-timed  piping  of 
the  boy  Jan  in  Strife  ;  the  moments  when  intimacy 
of  emotion  and  intimacy  of  effect  are  happily  at 
one,  as  when  Bill  "  touches  Freda's  arms  "  as  he 
252 


JOHN  GALSWORTHY 

goes  from  the  room  to  leave  her  with  his  mother, 
or  when  Sir  WilHam,  facing  the  thing  in  all  his  life 
he  has  never  been  asked  to  face,  grips  the  mantel- 
piece so  hard  "  that  his  hands  and  arms  are  seen 
shaking."  These  things  are  good;  singularly  at 
variance  with  the  things  which  seem  to  us  merely 
fastidious,  such  as  Lady  Cheshire's  distaste  for  the 
gamekeeper's  hands  in  his  moment  of  emotion 
— ^things  which,  at  any  rate,  fail  in  the  theatre 
of  their  intended  effect.  There  are  the  things 
again  that  people  do  in  unlikely  places,  such 
as  the  scene  between  Bill  and  Freda  in  the 
populous  hall,  and  then,  because  they  are  people 
in  a  drama  conscious  of  its  reality,  apologize  for 
the  unlikelihood.  Some  dramas  are  born  formal, 
some  achieve  form,  some  have  form  thrust  upon 
them.  Speaking  generally,  the  form  of  Mr. 
Galsworthy's  drama  is  less  the  spontaneous  ex- 
pression of  the  drama's  needs  than  a  form  self- 
consciously imposed.  The  tragedy  of  law  is 
formless,  so,  two  years  after  the  conviction,  form 
is  imposed  upon  it,  against  all  likelihood  : 

Walter.    "  The  rolling  of  the  chariot- wheels  of  Justice  !  " 
I've  never  got  that  out  of  my  head. 

No,  it  is  the  dramatist  who  has  not  got  it  out 
of  his  head  ;  Walter  forgot  it  long  ago.  It  is 
the  same  with  the  visiting  cards  in  The  Pigeon  ; 
we  feel  at  the  end  that  they  are  overstressed, 
lest  we  lose  sight  of  the  art  by  which  their 
employment  has  given  form  to  the  whole.     The 

258 


DRAMATIC  PORTRAITS 

use  of  the  old  play  to  give  form  to  the  new 
play  of  social  distinctions  we  have  already  seen ;  and 
the  rather  teasing  cleverness  of  the  end  of  Strife 
is  another  example  of  just  the  same  thing. 

The  art  which  tries  too  consciously  to  conceal  art 
is  the  art  that  does  not  succeed  in  its  aim ;  and 
this,  we  feel,  is  Mr.  Galsworthy's.  His  famous 
impartiality  defeats  itself  when  it  becomes  self- 
conscious  ;  so  far  from  the  concept  of  an  author 
being  remote  from  our  thoughts  as  the  force  which 
throws  up  and  draws  back  the  tides,  it  becomes 
very  definitely  present  to  us,  and  on  its  face  we 
seem  to  see  the  "  quaint  little  pitying  smile  " 
with  which  the  twentieth-century  young  lady 
from  Cambridge  saw  down  the  curtain  on  the 
comedy  of  her  brother  and  the  gamekeeper's 
daughter.  These  no  less  famous  "  curtains,"  which 
seem  to  hesitate  to  come  down  on  anything  that 
could  possibly  be  mistaken  for  a  climax,  similarly 
overshoot  the  mark,  for  theirs  is  the  art  which, 
starting  away  from  the  theatre's  unreality,  has 
ended  in  unreality  again.  In  the  English  theatre 
of  the  present  day  Mr.  Galsworthy  is  undeniably 
among  the  pioneers ;  we  cannot  but  be  indebted 
to  him  for  the  work  he  has  done :  but  in  it  there 
is  something  of  the  pioneer  who,  in  his  anxiety  to 
be  a  pioneer,  has  gone  so  determinedly  ahead  of 
the  main  army  that  he  has  caught  up  again  with 
its  rear. 


254 


CHRONOLOGY  AND 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 


CHRONOLOGY  OF  PLAYS 

The  dates  are  those  of  production  rather  than  of 
composition,  except  in  the  case  of  plays  which  have 
not  been  seen  on  the  pubhc  stage  in  England.  The 
titles  of  these  are  in  italics. 

1880     Hester's  Mystery. 

1881.  The  Squire. 
Vera. 

1882.  Girls  and  Boys. 
The  Silver  King. 

1883.  The  Duchess  ofPcidm. 

1884.  Saints  and  Sinners. 
Breaking  a  Butterfly. 
Deacon  Brodie. 
Admiral  Guinea. 

1886.  The  Schoolmistress. 
The  Hobby  Horse. 

1887.  Dandy  Dick. 

1888.  Sweet  Lavender. 
The  Weaker  Sex. 

1889.  The  Profligate. 

R  257 


CHRONOLOGY  OF  PLAYS 

1891.  The  Times. 
Lady  Bountiful. 
The  Dancing  Girl. 
The  American. 

1892.  Lady  Windermere's  Fan. 
Salomi. 

Widower's  Houses. 

Walker,  London. 

Judah. 

The  Magistrate. 

1893.  The  Second  Mrs.  Tanqueray. 
A  Woman  of  No  Importance. 

1894.  Arms  and  the  Man. 
Mrs.  Warren's  Profession. 
The  Professor's  Love  Story. 
The  Case  of  Rebellious  Susan. 

1895.  Guy  Domville. 

An  Ideal  Husband. 

The  Importance  of  Being  Earnest. 

A  Florentine  Tragedy. 

Candida. 

The  Benefit  of  the  Doubt. 

The  Notorious  Mrs.  Ebbsmith. 

The  Triumph  of  the  Philistines. 

1896.  Michael  and  his  Lost  Angel. 

1897.  The  Devil's  Disciple. 
The  Man  of  Destiny. 
The  Little  Minister. 

The  Princess  and  the  Butterfly. 
The  Liars. 
258 


CHRONOLOGY  OF  PLAYS 

1898.  Trelawney  of  the  "  Wells." 
The  Manoeuvres  of  Jane. 

1899.  Caesar  and  Cleopatra. 
The  Gay  Lord  Quex. 

1900.  You  Never  Can  Tell. 
The  Wedding  Guest. 
Mrs.  Dane's  Defence. 

1901.  Iris. 

1902.  The  Marrying  of  Ann  Leete. 
Captain  Brassbound's  Conversion. 
Quality  Street. 

The  Admirable  Crichton. 

1903.  The  Two  Mr.  Wetherbys. 
The  Admirable  Bashville. 
Little  Mary. 

Mrs,  Gorringe's  Necklace. 

Cousin  Kate. 

Letty. 

1901.     John  Bull's  Other  Island. 
A  Wife  without  a  Smile. 
Peter  Pan. 

1905.     The  Voysey  Inheritance. 

The  Return  of  the  Prodigal. 

Major  Barbara. 

The  Philanderer. 

Man  and  Superman. 

Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire. 

Pantaloon. 

Captain  Drew  on  Leave. 

259 


CHRONOLOGY  OF  PLAYS 

1906.  The  Silver  Box. 

The  Charity  that  Began  at  Home. 

The  Doctor's  Dilemma. 

Josephine. 

Punch. 

His  House  in  Order. 

The  Hypocrites. 

1907.  Waste. 

The  Cassilis  Engagement. 

Joy. 

The  Mollusc. 

1908.  Getting  Married. 

The  Last  of  the  De  Mullius. 
What  E>  ery  Woman  Knows. 
The  Thunderbolt. 
Dolly  Reforming  Herself. 

1909.  Penelope. 
Strife. 

The  Shewing-Vp  of  Blanco  Posnet. 
Mid-Channel. 

1910.  The  Madras  House. 
Misalliance. 
Justice. 

The  Twelve-Pound  Look. 
Old  Friends. 
A  Slice  of  Life. 
A  Single  Man. 

1911.  Fanny's  First  Play. 

The  Dark  Lady  of  the  Sonnets. 
Rococo. 

Preserving  Mr.  Panmure. 
The  Ogre. 
260 


CHRONOLOGY  OF  PLAYS 

1912.     Milestones. 
The  Pigeon. 
The  Eldest  Son. 
Overruled. 
Rosalind. 
Doormats. 
The  "  Mind  the  Paint  "  Girl. 


261 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The  Plays  of  Arthur  Pinero. 

London  :   1891,  etc.     William  Heincmann. 

The  Plays  of  Henry  Arthur  Jones. 

London  :  1894,  etc.  Macmillan  and  Co.  Also 
Samuel  French  and  Co.,  and  Lacy's  Acting 
Edition  of  Plays. 

The  Works  of  Oscar  Wilde. 

Edited  by  Robert  Ross.  London :  1908,  etc. 
Methuen  and  Co. 

The  Dramatic  Works  of  Bernard  Shaw. 

London :  1909,  etc.  Archibald  Constable  and 
Co. 

The  Dramatic  Works  of  St,  John  Hankin. 
London  :    1912.     Martin  Seeker. 

Granville  Barker. 

Three     Plays.     London  :      1909.     SidgAvick    and 

Jackson. 

Anatol  :     a    sequence    of    dialogues    by    Arthur 

Schnitzlcr,  paraphrased  for  the  English  stage  by 

Granville  Barker.     London:  1911.     Sidgwick  and 

Jackson. 

With  Laurence  Ilousman :  Prunella ;  or,  Love  in 
a  Dutcii  Garden.  London  :  1906.  Sidgwick  and 
Jackson. 

263 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The  Plays  of  Hubert  Henry  Da  vies. 

London  :   1910,  etc.     William  Heinemann. 

The  Plays  of  John  Galswortliy. 

London  :   1909,  etc.     Duckworth  and  Co. 


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